Took me a while to get to grips with this little piece of technology. Even though it really just involves photos and editing the whole hashtag and sharing on the cellphone really confounded my poor aging brain... unfortunately when you have teens in the house you really start to see how getting to grips with technology slowly starts to elude you!!
However I decided just over a year ago that it was now time to get with it. It was time for the Scott Kelby Walk and I was determined to share photos on the day as I went... 1135 post later I haven't looked back. It's a nifty little app that allows me to capture my day to day life.
I use it for a variety of reasons. It's a dual medium when on a photoshoot. Often allowing me to have an accurate reminder of the actual colour of the sunrise - something which can so often be lost when shooting in RAW on my Nikon. It is memory maker in my pocket. Sometimes I want to capture a memory to store away in my 'memorybank' or 'blissbox' and it allows me to do so. One day this will be the photo album I 'page' through. Remember days at the beach, walks in the park, celebratory dinners. All those things we never seem to take photos of anymore. I may not print them but I will have a visual record of those memories.
From time to time I undertake projects. Currently I'm doing 30 days of just Instagram/Snapseed photos which I upload onto my Flickr account. Amazingly one of those photos has achieved the highest views ever on my Flickr account and my highest position on Flickr Explor... just goes to show that you don't need all the fancy cameras and lenses. Although I would never give mine up.
When upgrading my phone I went for the Samsung S5 to give me the 16MP camera. As I was starting to use Instagram more and more I wanted quality pictures I could print and I must say I haven't been disappointed. I get a range of images and enjoy the flexibility my phone gives me when shooting. Last week for the first time I used only my phone when on a city shoot. A completely unique experience but one you see more and more of the 20-somethings doing. And you will see a lot of Instagrammers admit to owning nothing but their phones when it comes to capturing images.
For my creative side I love to manipulate the images using the various filters on offer. Snapseed being an additional program which gives even more control over your final edits. While I understand this is the stuff of nightmares for professional photographers it is the way the world is going at the end of the day. With up to 60 million photos posted daily just onto Instagram it is a market that is just exploding.
Next step is to expand my phone with one of the lens add ons such as the Olloclip which will give me macro and fisheye capabilities on my phone and a wider angle of shooting. I'm not complaining. I'm exploring my talent using a variety of tools at my disposal. For me it isn't about competing with anybody. It is about bettering my craft any way I can.
So if you see me busy tapping away on my phone I'm not necessarily being anti-social and chatting to friends... I could very well simply be taking photos and uploading them ;-)
10 instagram facts!
- Launched October 2010
- 20 BILLION photos uploaded as at 26/03/2014
- 60 MILLION photos posted on average PER DAY as at 26/03/2014
- 1.2 BILLION likes per day
- 1000 comments per SECOND
- 200 MILLION monthly active users
- 75 MILLION daily users
- 41% between ages of 16-24
- 70% of global instagram users log on at least once a day
- David Guttenfelder was the 2013 Instagram Photographer of the year (http://www.davidguttenfelder.com/)
Source : http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/important-instagram-stats/
Interesting Instagrammers to follow : (some are photographers, others not)
- s_mazzei
- dguttenfelder
- tlmappin
- everydaymiddleeast
- thelawry
- mcqueensflowers
- pixanator
- dane_forman
- gaveman18
- globemakers
- michaelmuller7
- lorraineloots
- black_white_baretti
- thephotosociety
- thewordvirus
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