Written by Christian Hopewell
Over the last 9 months Camera Ventures has been researching the current state of analog photography around the world, interviewing hundreds of people from CEOs integral to the industry, to upcoming young enthusiasts. We have gone on to undertake a survey of over 7500 analog enthusiasts from around the globe so that we can see how vibrant, varied and ultimately how healthy the analog camera scene is. This all with the hope that we can answer whether analog photography has what it takes to survive and be appreciated by the generations to come. If you’ve already taken part in our survey then we’d like to thank you for helping with this project, and if you’re yet to do so you can still take part here.
When you’re looking for analog photo inspiration, Twitter might not be the first place you think to look. The social network famed for it’s short, length-limited ‘tweets’ might be better known for presidential outbursts than for photographs, but if you know where to look, there’s photo discussion abound. Twitter’s photo contributions took a bit of a hit when they stopped Instagram photos from embedding into tweets, but photographs uploaded directly are still going strong. Twitter’s design also caters much more for searching out active topics and jumping into the conversation.
We asked our Cameraventures survey participants to let us know their favourite Twitter users and Twitter search terms for browsing and discussing analog photography – here are our results:
Top 10 recommended Twitter users:
Top 10 recommend Twitter hashtags:
While Twitter may not immediately seem like the place to go for your analog fix, taking a look at some of the recommendations we received shows that it truly is a vibrant platform. While other social media sites with an analog photographer presence may tend to be less time dependent, Twitter is home to live discussions. Scrolling through some of the film related hashtags brings up healthy photography discussion, photo critique and live industry news. Take a look, give some of the recommended users a follow and get involved in Twitter’s analog community.