I have just renamed this site and my social media to FREETHEFIGURES from FREETHEGEEKMAN. This follows some big changes I made to social media last year. This is just the final step in that process so rather than write another full article I have just updated this one
Original Article below published 2nd October 2022. New section added 26th June 2023 at the end to explain the latest change.
Back in October 2021 I decided to create a second toy photography Instagram account. The idea was to separate my LEGO photos from my other Action Figure photos.
A year later, I decided to only have one account again. LEGO and Action figure photos all together under my original Freethegeekman account (NOW RENAMED FREE THE FIGURES). That’s the TL:DR version of the rest of this article. If you want to hear a bit of reasoning behind it and related waffle about social media, read on…
Why Split In The First Place
I got into Toy Photography through a renewed love of collecting LEGO and built my modest Instagram following on that. As time moved on I started throwing the odd action figure photo in. When my collecting habbits started to include more 6 inch Action Figures so did my toy photography habbits.
Occasionally I would post an action figure photo on my Instagram and it would get way less interaction & less reach than my usual photos. It would also negatively impact how many people would see my next few LEGO photos. This was a little frustrating at the time, so I would limit how often I took and shared photos of anything other than LEGO.
About a year ago I decided I wanted to split my time more evenly over LEGO and action figurea. It had been pointed out to me before that the reasons for the negative impact of my non LEGO photos was likely because I had built my following on LEGO content. Of course, just because I like LEGO and other toys doesn’t mean all LEGO photography fans do. This made sense so I decided to create a new account.
Free The Figures
My Freethefigures account was born. Initially I enjoyed feeling free (pun not intended) to share whatever photos I wanted to share.
After a few months though I found myself less engaged with both accounts. I think that’s because I don’t think either account felt like “me” anymore.
On top of that I struggled to build a following with the new account and interactions on my original account were also lower than ever.
None of this was helped by Instagram chasing the TikTok crowd and making still images harder to break out
Other Media
I wanted a single place to share and store all my photos, and also somewhere to write toy reviews. I had done a few reviews for Brickcentral and discovered I really enjoyed doing them. I left the BC team at the end of 2021 and knew that I needed to keep scratching that itch. This website was born for that reason!
Later this year I also started experimenting with Tumblr and Vero as alternatives/additions to Instagram and also got a bit more active on Twitter. Why is this important?
By now Instagram now longer felt like the most important thing. It is where most people see my photos; that’s great and sharing my photos there will still be a big part of what I do. I no longer feel any pressure to grow there though or achieve certain numbers of likes (though I’m not going to lie, I feel good when I do get a larger number).
For the first few years of doing this all I wanted to do was grow and understand how to get more likes. This last year or so all I have wanted is to enjoy what I do and be personally happy with my photos. I am no expert in the psychology of social media so I can’t explain this.
Streamlined
With multiple social medias I really didn’t want to have multiple personas to manage on each, especially as I knew I was not enjoying that process on Instagram.
I decided to go back to a single account on Instagram. Freethegeekman will now be the home of all my toy photography. Yes some LEGO fans will not like that, and some action figure fans will not like it either.
I’m doing it this way because it’s the way I find most fun. Life is stressful enough, I don’t need my hobby to be a stress. More likes and more followers won’t make it more fun (and I was not getting those anyway!) I love taking photos of LEGO and other action figures like Marvel Legends, Mythic Legions, Mezco One:12 and many others. That mix is what feels like me.
If it means I alienate some exisiting followers, I can live with that. Not every account is for everyone. I hope loads of people like my mix of toy photos, but I’ll still have fun even if nobody does. And the ones who don’t like it will find plenty of other Toy Photo accounts that they do like
June 2023 Update – Name Change
Another 10 months or so have passed since I wrote this article and made those changes. Im happy with my merged account but I was unhappy with the name. I have wanted to change for a while but I was intially nervous about change and then when I did the account merge last year I was nervous about changing my name for another reason. I was about to be featured in an official LEGO photography book (see: LEGO In Focus: Featuring… Me!) which referenced me as FREETHEGEEKMAN, so I didn’t want to to be incorrectly credited! I feel enough time has now passed that I can let that go.
As A result I have changed the name of my main account to FREETHEFIGURES which hopefully is close enough to my old name that theres an obvious link but now its a name that makes a bit more sense.
FREETHEFIGURES 