Photographer Teru Kuwayama is no stranger to social media. The Senior TED fellow counts 34,315 followers on Instagram, and he created a project called Basetrack that spread information though social web services like Facebook about a battalion of U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
And now Kuwayama is even more entangled in the world of photography and the social Web: Facebook hired him in a newly-created role, as the company’s “photo community liaison.” Kuwayama says the role will allow him to advocate for fellow photographers with an insider’s cachet. “I’m here to make sure that the interests of photographers are represented in everything from feature development on the technical side to the terms of service on the legal side. So, my job is to make Facebook work for photographers, and to help photographers make the best use of the Facebook,” he told Photo District News. Kuwayama will deal with Instagram’s relationship with photographers as well, since the photo-sharing app is owned by Facebook.
Kuwayama will have plenty to work on: Facebook and Instagram are tremendously powerful sharing tools, but proper photography credit frequently gets disregarded by users re-sharing and re-posting images, which has created tension between photography communities and the social networks.
Hopefully Kuwayama’s new job won’t keep him too busy to keep up his Instagram feed, which is filled with remarkable photos he takes, as well as frequent “regrams” of other photographers. Here’s a few of the beautifully composed photos he posts:
(Via Pop Photo)
