As much as I resent the ubiquity of Instagram for rendering the rich colors of the world into their various processed palettes…
… I, too, occasionally find myself resorting to the convenience of phone camera photography.
Find me under shibasenji if you’d like. I won’t usually cross-post Instagram pictures to this blog, especially as I’m still figuring out why it seems so incredibly addictive to so many of my friends. Anyway, that seems to be one outlet for non dog-related pictures on occasion…
You dot have to filter pics. I often don’t. But lots of times they actually help. I found that my pictures of sunsets and stuff aren’t as saturated and I run the lo-fi (my fave filter, it just ups the contrast and saturation a bit with a fun frame, which you can also turn off) to make it look like what I want. Most are variations of contrast/saturation changes with sometimes a small colour/hue shift. Nothing that we haven’t been doing for years in Photoshop anyway. It’s just automated and square on IG. I like the social aspect, that I can make one post on IG & share it out to twitter, FB, tumblr and dump it automatically into Flickr too. Easy peasy. No more making the same post a million times. also I have a small group of contacts on there that I don’t have on other services and I like to comment on their stuff there. You can say more than say in twitter, which I obviously struggle with character limits.
Plus it’s totally voyeuristic. Most people take more daily or casual photos with IG than they do for any other format and comment as such so I can enjoy getting out of my own boring head/workspace by browsing, say, desk tags or daily arsenal tags.
One other fun thing is you can easily send them as postcards worldwide using another app (I have a friend who works for Sincerely who do Postagram and can say from experience sending/receiving they are fun and easy to send and get there in one piece. Not as personal as a handwritten/mailed card but cheap.)
Filtering seems to be half the fun though, and it’s striking that most Instagram pix seem to be filtered when, as you point out, it is optional. When it first came out (didn’t have an iPhone then), I was so confused why all of the sudden, all the pictures of some of my most photo-savvy friends all… started to look the same. It’s a strange and fascinating visual phenomenon to me because it’s going to date images very strongly — the way that certain kinds of grainy film stock, frames, aspect ratios, or other photographic techniques date other kinds of visual media.
And yes, I’ve noticed the intimacy factor too! So many objects that are just at hand appear so much more interesting and artsier when filtered, apparently.
Does anyone make sticker seals out of Instagram photos?
[EDIT: DUH! Of course! http://printstagr.am/stickers ]
I am trying the stickers out.
the shipping is $7 though!! Ugh.
Also, I would LOVE some Bow stickers if you do some.
If you want I’ll let you know how these turn out.
Another weird thing, they don’t use PayPal so you have to enter your CC on their page directly. Not super weird just strange nowadays.
Found you!