An estimated 2.1 trillion photos were taken in 2025 and roughly 5.3 billion are taken daily – that’s a staggering 61,400 per second. Many of these images never see the light of day and stay on a phone or hard drive gathering dust in a digital graveyard. The best pictures that are good enough however, usually get posted online with even fewer being printed out.
When it comes to posting our photography, edited or not, you’d think we have limitless options in a digital age, but if you want your friends, family and community to see your pictures you’re hamstrung by where they’re hanging out online, so to speak, so a website or app’s user base is sometimes the most important factor.
When Instagram launched in 2010, it wasn’t without flaws, it’s also been criticized for creating the modern ‘influencer’ world we live in whilst many saw it as a place to simply upload photos of their food.
However, Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stocks. The platform has since seen a huge shift towards video, with changed algorithms that make it hard to connect directly with your audience. It’s become more about creating short form video content, as well as chasing likes and followers – all of which takes time and attention away from our core photography.
Is the antidote to this, yet another app? Possibly. The Irys app was launched by legendary street photographer Alan Schaller and his team in September 2025. While they are not trying to compete with the likes of Instagram and Facebook, I would argue the experience is better with a smaller, more concentrated number of photography-driven individuals and a community spirit.
In a refreshing twist, Irys is free from ads, free of algorithms and puts photography first – you can’t see how many likes or followers a member has – it’s all about the pictures and less about chasing millions of followers.
I particularly like the ability to join specific groups and feel like part of a community. Rather than just the simple ‘like’ button, you also have buttons to praise a person’s exposure, composition. You can also see the EXIF data of images which is reassuring that you’re looking at a proper real-world photo rather than an AI generated one.
Founder Alan Schaller says “We have a clear direction of where we want to be, and a lot of it involves offline activities. Of course we will continue to focus on growing the online community, and in five years time I’m sure it’ll be a healthy size! But being online isn’t everything to photographers. We are already laying the groundwork for what I think is really important, which is in person events, publishing and an agency for photographers and brands”…”The times have changed on Instagram for photographers, which is a large reason why we built Irys. It has been built for the photography fans and industry, and won’t change its direction. This is the luxury of building something purpose made for a sector.”
He also went onto reveal an upcoming feature that is yet to be released called ‘voting’, “As of now, all Irys members can enter their images into themed groups, street photography groups, portrait groups, landscape groups and so on. The new voting feature will allow members to vote on the images that they like best within the groups they have joined. The images and photographers with the most votes will populate a Community Vote gallery that is visible on the explore page, and the work will be pushed to the whole Irys community, and stand a very good chance to be seen by the industry partners we have on board. This is important as it’s a way of making the quality of images the focus, not how many followers you have. Everyone has an equal chance of getting their work discovered, and for the right reasons.”
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: [email protected]
Related reading:
- Instagram has killed photography. Is this new app the answer?
- Quality photography is dead, says Instagram chief
- Instagram is bad for photographers – we need better!
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