Social Media's Top Guns

Web's star photographers tell all (well, actually, just enough). 

- Barry Tanenbaum

WOODY ALLEN IS OFTEN credited with saying that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For many photographers, that means showing up effectively in social media.

I recently talked with four pro shooters who were on a list of the top 100 photographers on the web. Compiled by XXLPIX, the list takes into account number of fans, social media resonance, and search results in ranking the most popular photographers. If you’d like to see the complete list, Google XXLPIX top 100. In the meantime, here’s what the members of our quartet say about their success.

THE LONG GAME 

Social media made it possible for Chase Jarvis to engage the photographic community.

In 2004 his focus was on telling the story of what it was like to be a pro photographer. “The industry was very close-doored,” he says. “I couldn’t get information from other photographers; it wasn’t a culture built on sharing. At the same time I saw the Internet changing and democratizing, and I thought, I’m going to get out in front of this.”

Sharing was his key to starting an exchange of even the most basic information. “What it was like to shoot this way, learn this technique, or mess this thing up. I gave people a look into what I called ‘the black box of photography.’ It was through sharing that I hoped to build community where I didn’t see community at the time.”

He didn’t realize it at the time, but what he was also doing was building a brand— “and all the people following me, learning from me, and sharing with me mattered to that brand.”