I’ve fallen in love with my blog.
Not in a “this is a good marketing asset” way. More in a quiet, private, deeply satisfying way—like finding a room in your own house that you didn’t know existed, and realizing you can build a life in it.
And I can trace that shift back to two videos by Lucy Lumen:
I watched the 2025 video about ten months ago. At the time, I didn’t think it would change anything. I assumed it would be just another “platform breakdown” video—helpful, sure, but disposable.
Instead, it planted a very specific idea in my head:
Stop trying to live in other people’s houses. Build your own.
The problem isn’t my photography. It’s the environment I’m trying to share it in.
Lucy doesn’t say “social media is bad.” She says something more useful:
It’s frustrating because it’s unstable.
- Algorithms change.
- Layouts change.
- Reach swings like a mood.
- Engagement becomes random.
- And community—real community—starts to feel like a memory.
That hit me because it matches what I’ve felt for a while: online, it’s getting harder to share photography in a meaningful way.
Not “likes.” Not “reach.” But Meaningful.
The meaningful where someone actually spends time with an image.
The meaningful way in which context matters.
The meaningful way in which your work isn’t squeezed into whatever shape the platform currently prefers.
And then she lands the big point: find your why. Reverse engineer the outcome.
That’s the part that stuck in my ribs.
Because once you know your why, you stop chasing every shiny platform like it’s going to save you.
My “why” is simple: I want my work to be seen, and I want the words to matter too.
I don’t just want to post photos.
I want to build a body of work.
I want to document what I’m learning.
I want to explain why I made the frame, not just what I made or how I made it.
If you’ve read my post on situational awareness and the photographer’s eye, you already know how I see this: I don’t think “having a good eye” is magic. I think it’s attention—trained over time—turned outward on purpose.
A camera doesn’t create that. A feed doesn’t reward that. But a website can hold it.
A website gives me space to combine the two things I care about:
- the image
- the thinking behind the image
And as Lucy points out, a website is one of the few online places that still honours the work rather than flattening it.
Last November, I built my website. That was the real turning point.
Last November I built paul.macpherson.photography and started populating it with images and my thoughts. Not “content.” Thoughts.
That distinction matters.
Because social platforms subtly train you to speak in slogans.
A website lets me speak like a human again.
The best part is how it feels in real life.
I love being in a real-world conversation—someone asks what I shoot, or what I’m working on—and instead of fumbling through an Instagram grid that’s half-reels and half-ghost posts, I can say:
“Go here. This is my work. This is what it means to me. This is my project.”
It’s clean. It’s calm. It’s mine.
And honestly? It’s insulated in the best way.
The website is the home. Everything else is a signpost.
Right now I share my photography on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads—because I’m not pretending those places don’t matter.
But I’m not pretending they’re home either.
Lucy frames Instagram as “the handshake” or “the billboard.” That’s exactly how I’m starting to treat social media:
- Social platforms are distribution
- My site is archive + identity
- My blog is meaning
In the last week or so, I’ve started promoting my posts more actively across those platforms. But the goal isn’t to “build community” there (at least not yet). The goal is outbound: point people to the place where my work lives properly.
If you’ve read my post about getting serious about SEO, you’ll recognize the same theme: I’m building plumbing. Foundations. The unsexy work that makes the rest possible.
Because if the website is home, then SEO is the road system leading people to my house.
This is where situational awareness quietly becomes a sharing strategy
Here’s the part I didn’t expect: the same skill that helps me make photographs is helping me figure out how to share them.
Situational awareness, at its core, is scanning what’s happening, noticing what matters, and making decisions without being overwhelmed.
That applies to the internet, too.
Instead of reacting to every new platform shift, I’m trying to watch the environment:
- What kind of content is being rewarded?
- What kind of attention is being trained?
- What kind of behaviour is being pushed?
- What does it do to my mood, my focus, my work?
Lucy’s 2026 video speaks directly to that exhaustion: the pressure to be everywhere, the frustration of algorithm changes, the lack of authentic community.
So my current move is simple:
I’m choosing stability over noise.
That stability is my blog.
Why I’m considering YouTube next (and why it won’t replace the website)
In the new year, I’m contemplating expanding into YouTube.
Not to become a “YouTuber.”
Not to chase virality.
Not to perform my personality.
More like: one or two videos a month as an extension of the blog.
A way to:
- give context to the work
- talk through process
- show the photo walks, the light, the decision-making
- point people back to the posts
Lucy is honest about YouTube: it’s work. It’s saturated. It rewards packaging. Sometimes honesty performs worse than sensationalism.
I appreciate that honesty because it reinforces the strategy:
If I do YouTube, I’ll do it as a tool—not as a trap.
The website remains the anchor.
And that fits how I already work. My best photography comes from the slow, deliberate side of my practice—the side I’ve written about in pieces like why walking the city is essential to my urban photography practice, or the projects where intention matters more than output.
YouTube can support that.
But it can’t replace it.
The bigger realization: the blog is a photographic practice, not just a publishing platform
This is the part I want to say clearly, because it surprised me:
Writing the blog is making me a better photographer.
Because writing forces clarity.
- Why a project exists.
- Why a lens choice matters.
- Why I keep returning to the same streets, the same light, the same ideas.
It’s the same discipline I talk about when I write about committing to voice and niche. The blog isn’t separate from the work. It’s part of the work.
And I think that’s the quiet genius in Lucy’s message about websites:
- A website isn’t just where you store your photography.
- It’s where you become the photographer you’re trying to be.
Where this is going in 2026
So here’s my plan, shaped by Lucy’s two videos and grounded in my own experience over the last year:
- Keep building the website as the permanent home base
- Keep using social platforms as signposts, not identity
- Keep writing because the writing sharpens the seeing
- Experiment with YouTube slowly, as a support beam—not the whole house
- Stay insulated from the platform negativity by focusing on what I can control: the work, the archive, the practice
And if there’s one thing I’d say to any photographer who feels stuck in the “share / don’t share” debate:
- You don’t need a bigger audience to make this worthwhile.
- You need a space that respects your work.
For me, that space is my blog, this website.
And I’m grateful Lucy Lumen said the part out loud that I needed to hear:
Build the home. Then decide which roads you want to use to get people there.