Instagram Favorites for April 2012
As far as I can tell, the sole hindrance one could ever have for not continuing to photograph with the iPhone on any given day is by running out of battery life and it’s a setback that’s happen a lot lately. When I’m out on the streets, I would intentionally resist my impulse to check on RSS feeds or catch up on tweets for the single purpose of conserving battery life, so there’s this feeling of being limited to using the device and I don’t like it.
To make better of the situation, I had mentioned a while back how I would invest on a Mophie Air Plus to get me more through a day without having the fear that I can only use the iPhone for so much in a day. Between the 4 Star reviews on Amazon and speaking with Apple employees who actually owned the device, there was a cloud of too many mixed reviews to consider buying this particular battery case.
To make a long story short, I came across the PhoneSuit Elite Battery Case which I had read about back when I had no interest to buy one. One of the biggest complaints from Mophie owners was that it added a bulkiness to the iPhone and the PhoneSuit is being praised for the opposite reason. On top of that, it’s supposedly provides you with a 100% battery life recharge and it does it at a much rapid rate than it’s competitor.
At $80, I ordered the white version which I should be receiving sometime this week. Despite the amount of reviews already written about the device, I’ll more than likely end up writing about my experience as well but with a strong emphasis coming from a mobile photographer’s perspective.
As usual, I have this monthly routine of collecting 12 of my favorite Instagram photos from the previous month. In case you noticed the layout of the images seem different, it’s because I decided to go with a different one which I’m more pleased with.
Find me on Instagram with my usual handle of jorgeq.
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Instagrid Network »
Apparently Instagram is reaching a point where it’s no longer just a service about letting you share photos with friends and like-minded people. It appears that if you’re popular enough on the service and have an enormous following, regardless of whether your photographs are great or not, you can now get paid for inserting a brand name every so often once you become member of the Instagrid Network. It was developed by the find folks at Instagrid.me
I guess it’s similar to when celebrities Tweet about certain products. They may not necessarily like them but they’re getting compensated to mentioned them which is the ulterior motive. Reminds me a lot of what the Kardashians do. As long as they’re getting paid, they literally put their name on anything.
I’ll be interesting to see how this network thing goes.
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Pro Photographers Potentially Ruining Instagram? »
The gist of the article:
There is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t post your DSLR edited shots to a service like 500px, Google+ or Flickr, that’s is what they are there for. Instagram is called Instagram because the service is suppose to represent the photography you took in….wait for it….an instant. To be blunt, just because you are able to upload photos from your iOS photo library doesn’t mean you should.
At first I puzzled about how I felt with photographers uploading their processed dSLR photos onto Instagram but I’ve concluded that I dislike it. I use Instagram to share photographs taken exclusively with the iPhone because there’s a level of authenticity to the process as oppose to bypassing the limitations the iPhone may have when shooting with it and replacing it with a dSLR.
The purpose of an app like Instagram is to celebrate the increasingly mobile culture. There’s no right way or wrong way to use the service but sharing dSLR photos on Instagram seems almost like violating the spirit of the app.
I understand the majority of people probably won’t care where a photo published on Instagram came from because to them, a photo is a photo. For me it’s like you saying you’re going to bake a cake based exclusively from what you know and what have in your kitchen but in the end you end up borrowing ingredients from your neighbor along with suggestions on how to make it look even prettier. Perhaps not the best analogy but it’s the only one I can think of at the moment.
What I upload to Flickr is different from what I share on Instagram and I never feel the need to cross-pollinate my photos between the platforms so as to gain more exposure on what I shoot.
I can’t impose on you as to how you should use Instagram but seeing people upload dSLR photographs on the service is as much as a turnoff as seeing people share stupid fortune cookie comments with Tweegram.
And by the way, “Thou Shalt Never Post dSLR Photo to Instagram” is commandment number one so stop violating it.
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Instagram Favorites for March 2012
I somehow failed to publish a handful of my favorite photographs taken during the month of February and after seeing how little I shot for that month alone, I felt less bad about neglecting what had become a monthly routine.
Lot of buzz surrounding the service lately and I don’t generally write about these things but I know some people have had strong opinions and have even expressed their enormous distaste against Facebook for having purchased Instagram and I can tell you that I’m not one of them. In spite of the acquisition of which we haven’t caught sight of any major changes yet, I still see Instagram as a community of people who value art and photography and as long as pushy ads don’t percolate through our Instagram stream, I’m ok with continuing to use it.
Most of the photos I publish on Facebook pertain to family. Rarely do I ever share the type of photographs I share either on my site or Instagram and I think the reason behind this is because on Instagram, I feel I connect more to people on a artistic level which I haven’t found elsewhere online. In fact, I would go as far to say that a “Like” on one of my Instagram photos prompts me a greater high than a “Like” on Facebook or Flickr.
I’m still actively using Instagram and I’m not abandoning it quite yet although what I have been dumping is people who publish those annoying Tweegrams. I don’t mind reading inspiration quotes every now and then but if that’s what I gotta put up with everyday upon launching the app, I would much rather choose to stuff my face with fortune cookies after having purchased them wholesale.
Very much like Twitter, I don’t subscribe to a great deal of people on Instagram and I personally feel that the lower I keep the number, the higher the value I get from the service because it enable me to pay more close attention to those who I have chosen to follow who in one way or another enrich me creatively.
Find me on the service with my usual handle of jorgeq.
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Instagram Favorites for January 2012
As addicting as photographing with your iPhone may be, the downside to the habit is seeing how quickly the battery is afflicted with the constant motion of snapping away consistently.
To alleviate that a bit, I’ve been researching some battery-packed cases and regardless of how high of a rating any of them may have, the consensus seems to be that the case itself is far from comfortable when holding. Part of the ease in photographing with the iPhone realizing how effortless the process is and the last thing I need is to add any discomfort to the technique I’ve established for myself.
Pat Dryburgh mentioned how he owns the Mophie Air and he seems to be content with it so far. I haven’t decided on any particular case yet but if push comes to shove, I wouldn’t be against to have tucked in my pocket a Mophie Juice Battery Pack
In the mean time, I’m reflecting back on some of my favorite photographs taken using Instagram for the month of January.
Find me on the service with my usual handle of jorgeq.
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Why Instagram Is So Popular: Quality, Audience, & Constraints »
I’ve been wanting to piece together some thoughts about Instagram for some time now, largely because it’s the one app I use extensively and if the ability to distinguish severe indentations on the icon were possible at all, you would unquestionably notice them. As far as content, I had no intentions to add to the litany of published articles trying to explain what the app is and how do go about using it because quite frankly that would be the equivalence of me telling you where to drive your car to. That’s totally up to you. You choose your own route.
At this point, what hasn’t been said about the app and just as I was wrapping the scattered notes on how influential the service has been to me as a photographer, I come across an article written by Nate Bolts over at Techcrunch describing exactly what the driving force behind my article was. He says:
Knowing millions of people are creating with roughly the same camera and app as you makes it exciting creatively. So constraints, combined with quality and an audience are what makes Instagram so addictive.”
Of course he goes on and elaborates more on why everyone seems to have adopted the service as quickly as they’ve done with Twitter and Facebook. I love that in the most mundane moments in life, I have this urge to want to find something worth looking at and sharing. I don’t think that’s a direct result of Instagram, it’s more the photographer in me but it certainly helps having tools that make you want to stay curious.
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