Every few months, someone in one of my workshops asks me whether it’s even worth posting on Instagram anymore. They’ve spent hours editing a shot, written a thoughtful caption, and watched it collect fourteen likes while some heavily filtered snapshot of a foggy pier racks up thousands. I never have a clean answer, because the truth is complicated. That’s exactly why I spent an evening watching Mark Denney work through this question in his video, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube. Denney is someone I’ve respected for a long time, and his take on whether Instagram is destroying landscape photography is one of the more honest and nuanced versions of this conversation I’ve come across.

What follows isn’t a simple recap. I want to walk through the actual structure of Denney’s argument, add what twenty years of selling prints and leading workshops has taught me about these same pressures, and give you something useful to carry into the field and onto your feed.

Step 1: Understand That the Debate Has Two Legitimate Sides

Two schools of thought introduced on screen Two schools of thought introduced on screen Denney opens by acknowledging something that most hot-take articles on this subject never bother with: reasonable people land in genuinely different places on this. There are photographers who believe Instagram has been a net positive for the craft, and there are photographers who believe it has done real damage. Neither side is being naive or cynical. Both are responding to real experiences.

This framing matters before you do anything else, because it keeps you from dismissing the whole conversation. If you walk into it already certain of your position, you’ll miss the parts that are actually useful to you.

Step 2: Recognize the Reach That Simply Did Not Exist Before

Discussion of distribution methods before Instagram Discussion of distribution methods before Instagram Denney walks through what it actually looked like to distribute your work before Instagram existed. Art exhibitions. Gallery submissions. Photo contests. Driving traffic to a personal website through search engine optimization, which anyone who has tried it knows is a slow and often thankless process. These were the available channels, and they were all slow, gatekept, and expensive in either time or money.

Instagram changed the math entirely. A photographer with a clear vision and a consistent body of work can now reach an audience of thousands or hundreds of thousands without a gallery director’s approval or a magazine editor’s interest. I remember what it felt like before that existed. I was cold-calling regional galleries and mailing physical prints to editors. The friction was enormous. Anyone who glosses over this shift is romanticizing a system that actively kept most photographers invisible.

Step 3: Appreciate the Idea Exchange the Platform Enables

Sharing compositional and editing techniques via Instagram Sharing compositional and editing techniques via Instagram One of the quieter positives Denney raises is how effectively Instagram functions as a living idea exchange. Scroll your feed and you’ll encounter forced perspective compositions you hadn’t tried, exposure blending techniques from photographers who’ve spent years refining them, and editing approaches that would have taken years to discover on your own through trial and error alone.

I think about this every time I run a workshop. Students show up already familiar with concepts that used to take years of exposure to photo books and mentor relationships to absorb. Instagram compressed that learning curve significantly. That’s not nothing. If you’re using the platform the right way, treating it as a visual library rather than a performance stage, it genuinely makes you a better photographer faster.

Step 4: Acknowledge That Instagram Made the World Visible in New Ways

Sharing global locations through Instagram feeds Sharing global locations through Instagram feeds Denney makes a point here that I find genuinely moving: Instagram has shown people corners of the earth they would never otherwise have encountered. Patagonia, the Dolomites, Joshua Tree, the fjords of Norway. For someone who may never be able to travel to these places, the platform creates a kind of democratic access to the planet’s beauty.

From where I work in central Oregon, I’ve watched local landscapes I’ve photographed for years suddenly appear on feeds around the world. There’s something that feels right about that. The land doesn’t belong to whoever happens to live nearby. Sharing it broadly feels like part of the job.

Step 5: Sit With the Central Contradiction of Reach

Flood of 95 million daily photos discussed Flood of 95 million daily photos discussed Here is where Denney’s argument gets genuinely interesting, and where I think he earns the most credit for intellectual honesty. Instagram solved the problem of distribution, then immediately created a harder version of the same problem. If 95 million photos are uploaded every single day, your single frame has to compete with all of them. The platform made it easier for everyone, which means the advantage it gave you is shared equally with every other photographer on earth.

This is not a reason to quit Instagram. But it is a reason to stop thinking of posting as a strategy in itself. The platform is a noise machine. Getting noticed inside it requires either understanding its algorithm deeply, building community actively over time, or creating work so distinctive that it stops people mid-scroll. Probably all three. I’ve watched technically excellent photographers disappear into the feed because they treated Instagram like a mailbox they drop things into rather than a conversation they’re part of.

Step 6: Apply the Honest Question to Your Own Practice

Personal reflection on photography motivation Personal reflection on photography motivation What Denney is really building toward is a question every landscape photographer needs to answer privately: are you making photographs for the platform, or are you making photographs and sharing them there? The distinction sounds small. In practice, it shapes every decision you make from the moment you set the alarm.

I know photographers who scout locations based on what’s trending on Instagram. They reverse-engineer the shot from a popular image and then replicate it. The result is technically polished and emotionally empty. I know other photographers who barely check their engagement, spend weeks returning to a single location, and produce work that people still license years later. The feed rewards the first type more consistently in the short term. The second type builds something that lasts.

What I’d Add After Two Decades in the Field

The debate Denney outlines assumes Instagram is the variable. I think the more important variable is what you decide your photography is for before you ever open the app. I still occasionally shoot on film, not because film is better, but because it forces me to stand in front of a scene and make a decision before I touch the shutter. Instagram creates the opposite pressure. It pushes you toward volume, toward frequency, toward the caption as much as the image.

My lucky hat goes on every shoot regardless of whether I’m posting the results. The mountain, as someone wise once told me, doesn’t care about your posting schedule. If you can hold onto that feeling while still engaging thoughtfully with the platform, Instagram becomes a useful tool rather than a creative landlord.

The most important thing to carry away from Denney’s video is this: Instagram didn’t change what good landscape photography is. It changed what gets seen. Those are not the same thing, and confusing them is where most photographers lose their way. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and let Denney walk you through the full argument in his own words.