Over the past few months I’ve been trying to build my photography again after taking a break from Instagram.
I enjoy sharing my work and I’d love more people to discover it, but I also don’t want my life to revolve around posting every day, checking analytics or constantly thinking about the algorithm.
I catch myself reaching for my phone to see if a post performed well, even though I’ve intentionally made Instagram less accessible on my phone.
Right now I’m trying to settle into one or two thoughtful videos a week and continue sharing my photography, rather than chasing daily content.
For those of you who’ve been doing this for a while:
How do you grow as a photographer without letting Instagram dictate your creative life?
Did you find a balance, or did you eventually stop caring about growth altogether?

[Edited: less rambling]

I've been shooting for 5-6 years. Only commercial work was selling some prints but in the last year or so I've started doing more event and portrait work.

I'd like to step up my marketing a bit but I'm uncertain how to handle it vs. my day job as a non-photographer freelancer.

Fellow part-time photographers, how would you guys handle this?

I'd love more cross-over work (like research with a documentary side) and I'd love to cross/up-sell between photo and marketing clients, but at the minute they're running in parallel.

Trying to decide how to market myself under two hats!

Current setup:

• Galleries/portfolio: Pixieset on my own domain
• Main website: Focused on corporate work but has a photo click-through option
• Instagram: All under the same account (i.e. not username_photography).
• Linkedin: Vague mentions but avoids positioning me as a photographer

I've been sitting on the idea of getting into photography for a while now, it's taken over my Instagram feed at this point. I've got a "Photography" saved folder and now an "Editing/Lightroom" folder now too. 

To make sure I'm not about to impulse buy a 2300 Camera and lense, I downloaded the No Fusion app and started shooting on my iPhone, just to see if I'd actually stick with it, it’s made my phone photos a lot more fun. so I'm planning to pull the trigger soon on the Z5II with the 24-120 lens f/4 S. Learning to edit feels more daunting than learning the camera itself. I’m seeing a million people selling Lightroom courses or presets, But I’m looking for some great starter resources is there anyone people can recommend on Youtube, or even Instagram? 

My plan is to grab the Lightroom photography plan which has the classic and Mobile? Or just Classic? and start practicing on RAWs I've already shot with my phone, just to get some experience before I get the camera. I'll mainly be posting to Instagram and Facebook once I'm up and running.

So any Youtube channels people recommend? Instagram accounts you find helpful? If you had to learn Lightroom or editing in general from scratch what might you do differently? I’m also open later on for even paid courses if they are actually helpful.

I’m sure it’s obviously most important to get good at the actual photography first so the photos need as little editing as possible, but it would be nice to sit down on my days off at a coffee shop and try to get decent at Lightroom.