Audiences are a tricky beast! Who are these people? On a broad scale, we often categorize our audiences into two groups: those who look at prints and those who consume photography digitally. But that is painting with a very, very broad brush—and it’s vital that we go deeper to really understand audiences and their various disparate fragmentations.
I’ll explain why it’s critical to understand these audiences in a bit. First, let’s examine how these audiences fragment into smaller groups. For instance, on the digital side of things, it’s not good enough to say “digital viewers.” Digital audiences can be subdivided into social media audiences: those who visit photographers’ websites, those who subscribe to email lists for PDF images, those who follow digital photography magazines, and so on.
Those categories can be further subdivided into even narrower audiences. Social media is the easy example here: Facebook audiences, Instagram audiences, people who watch photography slideshows on YouTube, people who follow photographers on Twitter, and the list goes on.
And on the print side of things? It’s easy to assume that this subgrouping of audiences is more simplistic, but in truth, there are many ways to consume printed photographs. There are people who collect coffee table books full of photography. There are people who consume art at museums, people who frequent galleries hunting for “the one” to purchase—again, the list goes on.
Now, we’ll explain why understanding these audiences is critical. Each audience is looking for something different. On social media, people often want sharable content that encourages them to click like buttons and share things they enjoy with their friends and followers. Some social media sites encourage discussion, meaning the people there are looking for “meaty” photographs that they can discuss at length.
People subscribing to email lists aren’t necessarily looking for sharable images, but rather images that hit their inboxes with impact. These people often enjoy pouring over a photographer’s digital image collection while sipping their morning coffee.
The same can be said for the print audiences—everyone here is looking for something a little bit different. People browsing galleries and buying photographs often look for large single images that make a statement. People collecting coffee table books are looking for a story told through a series of images, or they’re looking for a collective body of work to enjoy.
I’m sure if we dig into this, we’ll find that I’m missing dozens of these little subdivisions—but the subdivisions aren’t the main point. The main point is that when we understand these audiences, we can find them and choose which among them to make our own.
By this, I don’t mean creating photographs to suit particular audiences. Rather, I think it’s better to find the audiences that suit what we’ve already created. If you enjoy creating images in a series, then perhaps those who subscribe to PDFs or collect books are audiences for you because these are people more likely to want to look at groups of images. If you’re largely a creator of single statement images, then posting them on Instagram or displaying them in galleries may be the way to go.
For every photographer, there is an audience. The key isn’t to mold yourself to fit one of those audiences but to find the people looking for your offer.