How Street Photographers Gain an Audience on Instagram: Efi Longinou (35k followers)

Julie

In this Instagram series we dig into the world of likes and followers. Photographers with a larger following describe their Insta beginnings, the importance of their audience and more. This week it’s time for Efi Longinou!

 

Insta Facts

Location: Berlin
Profession: Actress
Collective: interCollective
Group Exhibitions: Women Street Photographers (New York, 2018)
Detour Exhibition, (Athens, 2016)

Instagram username: efi_o
Posts: 970
Followers: 35k
Following: 692
Favourite hashtags: #womenstreetphotographers #womeninstreet #burnmyeye #ihatesp #eyeshotmag #thisaintartschool #hikarycreative #in_public_sp #balkan.collective

First posted photo: September 2012

Last posted photo: January 2019

Most popular photo: November 2018

Insta Questions

1. When and how did you start posting on Instagram?
My sister proposed me to download the app in 2012 and she told me that I can take photos of my surroundings and upload them there. I found it a very nice idea. So I started to take photos with my phone. In the beginning I photographed whatever grabbed my attention and then I realised, that I like whatever concerns the life on the street.

 

Posted: October, 2018 – Likes: 1015 – Comments: 66

 


Posted: January 2017 – Likes: 670 – Comments: 55

 

2. How did you gain this amount of followers?
Instagram curated for some years a list of featured photographers, back in the early years of the platform. Twice I was among the featured photographers. That is how I gained a lot of followers.

 

3. How important to you is your your online audience? Does the online feedback influence your artistic or editorial choices?
When I am out taking photos, I am concentrated on my surroundings and the people on the street. I am learning by doing. I respect the opinion of the others, but most of all I follow my instincts and I post the photos I personally like.

 


Posted: May 2018 – Likes: 1157 – Comments: 76

 

4. What kind of images are most popular and do they align with your personal favourites?
It is very difficult for me to describe what kind of images are most popular. Sometimes I have the impression, that photos with bright pale colours and clean composition, with a very obvious story, are the most popular. But this is just an observation. I personally like documentary photography, candid shots that are either emotional or with a sense of humor.

 


Posted: December, 2018 – Likes: 1230 – Comments: 73

 


Posted: August 2018 – Likes: 1127 – Comments: 48

 

5. Do you enjoy any financial benefits from having so many followers?
No, I don’t.

 

6. Do you have advice for photographers who want to grow on Instagram?
If the goal is, to show your own work to a wider audience, it helps to be featured on other accounts by using the appropriate hashtags.

 

 

Links to Efi’s work:
Instagram
interCollective

 

Also read our previous interview from this Instagram series, with Lorenzo Catena.

 

© All the pictures in this post are copyrighted. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.


by Julie Hrudová, founder of StreetRepeat
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2 thoughts on “How Street Photographers Gain an Audience on Instagram: Efi Longinou (35k followers)”

  1. I love her pictures and of course I’m following her on Instagram. Thanks for this interview! I think that growing on Instagram is more about relationships with other photographers. If you relate with people from accounts that promote photographers (like eyeshot) and can be friends with them you have more opportunities than someone who is doing it alone. I don’t like the street photography scene on Instagram because of that. It’s more about ass-kissing than quality photos.

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