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Instagram - Anyone here on it?

kjb

Proof reading not always a strength
I haven't posted on the pfm photo site for ages - partly because I no longer use any of the sites you need to upload photos.

I have started putting a daily photo from what I am grandly calling "my archive" on Instagram. These can be seen as on Instagram as kjburrellphoto.

This is partly in response to a project I was going to be involved with in Oxford called Activating Our Archives whch has sadly pulled as a result of CV-19.

One unfortunate consequence of trying to select images has been realising how many of my photos are either hopeless or mundane - or both. It's great to have endless documentation of family gatherings etc but I really need to develop more focused projects alongside these - making photos rather than taking photos. The ones I'm selecting are a mix of street, portraits, travelogue or some family shots that have interesting compositions.

I am hoping Instagram is going the be more secure this time around. I shut my previous account two years ago after repeated hacking by Russian bots who commandeered my pictures.

Does anyone else use Instagram? It would be great to follow you and share images if you do.

Kevin
 
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I’d shut all my accounts down a while back but a condition of the project was sharing on Instagram or another social media site.

Do you share any of your photos? What do you use?
 
What's your IG handle @kjb ?

I'm here:

https://www.instagram.com/amar_sood_photography/?hl=en

I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with the platform to be honest!

Lefty

I agree with you, more hate than love really. It does seem to be the way of getting your photos out there at the moment, but the fact that it is designed and rigged for phones takes so much away from the image quality, and some more than others. This particularly compromises images that are in landcape format. I did go through a stage of doing special crops in square or 4 x 3, but it is a faff. If you look at the photos on a PC the image is still very squashed in resolution, and massively disappointing. Facebook is actually far better in qualitative terms (if you click through onto the photos to get them at full uploaded size), but otherwise a hopeless user/viewer interface, and nobody seems to use it now anyway.
 
I haven't posted on the pfm photo site for ages - partly because I no longer use any of the sites you need to upload photos.

I have started putting a daily photo from what I am grandly calling "my archive" on Instagram. These can be seen as on Instagram as kjburrellphoto.

This is partly in response to a project I was going to be involved with in Oxford called Activating Our Archives whch has sadly pulled as a result of CV-19.

One unfortunate consequence of trying to select images has been realising how many of my photos are either hopeless or mundane - or both. It's great to have endless documentation of family gatherings etc but I really need to develop more focused projects alongside these - making photos rather than taking photos. The ones I'm selecting are a mix of street, portraits, travelogue or some family shots that have interesting compositions.

I am hoping Instagram is going the be more secure this time around. I shut my previous account two years ago after repeated hacking by Russian bots who commandeered my pictures.

Does anyone else use Instagram? It would be great to follow you and share images if you do.

Kevin

A couple of weeks ago I opened an Instagram account but haven't uploaded anything yet. I'm still trying to figure out which tags are important.

It's all about tagging nowadays; fail at that and your photos won't get viewed. And that is why we are posting them publicly in the first place.


I find that the process of selecting/editing worthy images is just as important as selecting and framing the subject, and a very difficult task.
I seem to get emotionally involved with some banal or plain bad photos and find it hard to get rid of them.

I'd love to find a "critique" community where one could ask for and provide this kind of feedback. I've heard that some Flickr groups do this.
 
Hi - signed on to follow you.

mine is kjburrellphoto - I use the app so don't know the web address.

Great - just seen and followed you as well.

I do like some aspects of Instagram (it's very social and I talk to a lot of other photographers on there). However, as @eternumviti says, it's also a bit of a faff. To get 'noticed' on there is a lot of work. Mostly because of aspect ratios, tagging and posting at the right times. To compound that, you have to do it all on a mobile as well. (mobiles are ok for (low quality) content consumption, but not great for content creation I find.

I think the original ethos behind the platform is a good one. I.e. posting square images taken on your phone with caricatured processing through the use of 'filters'. But it has got so far away from that now. People putting too much effort into it has made it a high pressure, high stress platform. I much prefer Flickr for many reasons (it scales to fit the aspect ratio of your image, displays metadata, displays at a high enough resolution for the image to be appreciated / enjoyed etc...) The trouble with Flickr is that very few people use it compared to Instagram.

Lefty
 
I've always disliked flikr, for some reason. I find that the community is just too vast, too many photos to wade through, everything gets swamped. Years ago I started to sign up, and found the info they required intrusive too, which put me off.

Why is it that in the display every 4th or 5th photo is shown at full screen width, so way beyond its upload size, and therefore at an awful, stretched resolution?
 
Great - just seen and followed you as well.

I do like some aspects of Instagram (it's very social and I talk to a lot of other photographers on there). However, as @eternumviti says, it's also a bit of a faff. To get 'noticed' on there is a lot of work. Mostly because of aspect ratios, tagging and posting at the right times. To compound that, you have to do it all on a mobile as well. (mobiles are ok for (low quality) content consumption, but not great for content creation I find.

I think the original ethos behind the platform is a good one. I.e. posting square images taken on your phone with caricatured processing through the use of 'filters'. But it has got so far away from that now. People putting too much effort into it has made it a high pressure, high stress platform. I much prefer Flickr for many reasons (it scales to fit the aspect ratio of your image, displays metadata, displays at a high enough resolution for the image to be appreciated / enjoyed etc...) The trouble with Flickr is that very few people use it compared to Instagram.

Lefty

you can switch Chrome into a mobile phone mode and then upload and post direct from a computer. When I’m at my desktop tomorrow I’ll post the instructions
 
you can switch Chrome into a mobile phone mode and then upload and post direct from a computer. When I’m at my desktop tomorrow I’ll post the instructions

But you can't do multiples, only singles.

Instagram closes down all fixes that permit you to post from your PC, but this one, apart from the point above, still works.
 
I'm still tied into the Apple system even after the demise of Aperture. This means all changes made on my iMac go via the cloud to my phone and can then be uploaded to Instagram with changes and its intact.

For me Instragram is what it is. I'd rather see photos on a wall or in a book tbh. For me computers screens have got us too focused on pixel quality or screen size views. I keep being struck when I go to exhibitions how small many of my favourite photos are, postcard sized sometimes ( Ansel Adams), and by the lack of crispness from pictures taken with older technology. The recent retrospective at The Tate from Elton John's collection was a case in point.

Instagram is really limited and suits certain photos more than others but it serves a purpose and allows me to follow a few of my favourite photographers as well as share my own stuff. It'll do for now.
 
I have an account - mainly to follow models I work with - so occasionally post images there, but it is a real pain - quite why they make it so mobile phone locked is a mystery now considering how it is now used. I also follow lots of photographers and photo publications - I can't imagine they put all that content up via a phone do they?

When I move into photo education (a plan for later this year - maybe...) I will have to make the effort to put myself out there.
 
To use in Google Chrome

Open up Instagram
Rick Click On Image - Select Inspect
Then in pane with HTML text, at the top, there is a icon next to the word Elements - this icon(botton) switches between mobile and desktop
Press it once then refresh the page - now you are in mobile mode
 


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