Quoted By:
>Why the fuck does everyone do this?
The way instagram works makes it very hard to get people's attention. Out of all the views of your photo you only get a small percentage of people who:
a) aren't your followers
b) decide to visit your profile
And even if they do, you only have few seconds to catch their attention. People usually don't view photos in full but first look at the feed as whole. Giving it more unified look is one of the ways to make people more likely to either straight on follow you or take look at more photos.
> Don't people realize how this just limits creativity and forces the same bullshit shots and style over and over?
Depends, creative photographer can dish out plenty of interesting ideas while maintaining coherent style including color palette and composition. However being good instagrammer doesn't require being a good photographer and vice versa. Take Cathleen Naundorf for example. She's got her work published in Harper’s Bazaar, National Geographic or Condé Nast. Her photographs being internationally collected and exhibited worldwide in galleries and museums. In 2016 she recieved American photography award yet her instagram has 13k followers.
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
> Is this why I can't get 1k followers but some faggots 400 shots of the same ocean waves gets 50k+?
Instagram is a lottery, especially if your main source of followers is instagram itself. I would guess the person with 50k+ either does lots of networking outside of the social media or simply bought the followers. Grid aesthetic isn't really requirement but can get you a little bit of edge against the other 400 000 000 posts in the #photography hashtag
