The Eiffel Tower Effect

With the enormous growth of social media and the sheer number of prosumer cameras out there in the world, we’re left with a new conundrum. We now have to work out how to shoot iconic locations, often made famous by Instagram but always shown on all our social media feeds, in a way that is unique. I wrote a post for Platypod about using gear to overcome this challenge when shooting whereby we can achieve a new perspective using our Platypod to get our camera down low, and I’ve talked before about something that I want to reiterate here, and here’s what it is: -

Quite often the best way to shoot something as iconic as the Eiffel Tower itself in a new way is to change the way we see it and the way we compose our photo. Rather than shooting the Eiffel Tower as the subject of the photo, just think about how different everything would be if we shot it as a feature of a larger scene, making it the hero if the image but changing our perspective so as to find a unique composition with different elements making up the larger scene. 

There are largely two reasons we take photos of such iconic locations. One is to immortalise our visit to such a location, resulting in that photo serving as somewhat of a piece of evidence to prove we were there. The other is to express out creativity, and it’s this creative expression that we work with as photographers to hone our skills, and to develop and refine our signature style. When we take this to an audience, be that an audience of prospective customers or the masses on social media, we want our image to be the one that stands out among the crowd. Whatever your reasoning is for creating a unique image, here’s the rationale as to why it should be different: -

It’s 9pm and someone is on Instagram, scrolling through their curated feed, determined by the algorithm that drives Instagram, and seeing what beautiful pictures the world has to offer. The thumb scrolls, then pauses, then scrolls, then pauses, but our image hits their screen an because we put a little extra effort into creating a unique photo their thumb stops for just a little bit longer. Perhaps they hit the little heart, and perhaps they even leave a comment, but in either case the algorithm noticed that they paused on our image for a little longer and decides that they must like it. It looks at this person’s data – their age, gender, interests, location, and all the other sneaky stuff Meta has on record, and it decides to show our photo to more, similar people. If this person is interested then other people must also be interested and our photo helps to keep people on their platform for longer, exposed to more of their ads and therefore generating them more revenue. 

It’s sad to say it, but that’s the world we live in now. As well as gaining people’s attention for image sales, attracting them to our website, promoting our services, we need to consider the Eiffel Tower Effect in order to manipulate the algorithm that drives the social media platforms we use daily because the more people we’re exposed to, the greater chance we have of achieving our aims, whatever they may be. 

With that little piece of knowledge, keep the Eiffel Tower in mind the next time you’re out shooting and use the knowledge that it features so many times on Instagram to help think and shoot differently in order to make great photos from a unique perspective.