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The Instagram Love Hate Relationship

carrot-cake-instagram

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How I Use Instagram

Up until recently I never had an iPhone, so playing on Instagram required an iPad or a web app that let me browse photos. On Twitter I shared all of my Instagram photographs as they happen. I use a web app to automatically send any of my Instagram photos to my WordPress driven Phone Blog. I use the same web app to automatically download all of my Instagram photographs to a Dropbox folder. Each week I upload new Instagram photos to an album on Google+. This week I received an interesting comment on one of these photos. The comment sparked this article. However, it’s not the first time I’ve read something like it.

“i’m not a fan of instagram for strictly personal prejudices (!!)… but this image really captures a mood and moment- can see why you chose to post it!”

Instagram’s Social Network

Instagram is one of those love/hate photo applications out there. I’ve heard people complain that they don’t like the effects as it degrades the quality of a photo. Well, this might be true however Instagram is more than just an extremely simple photo editing app. It is a social network, like Flickr, like 500px, like Google+ and Facebook and Twitter. You can share, comment, like, search by hashtag, etc.

Should every photographer be on Instagram? It of course depends on the photographer, but I believe the answer is yes. It’s another outlet for photographers to network, create and inspire.

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Instagram Photo Editing

Getting back to the editing portion of Instagram. Did you know that you can post photographs without any edits whatsoever? Just this past weekend I photographed some beautiful cake using my iPhone 4S. I put the camera on HDR mode so it captures as much detail as possible. I knew the subject wasn’t moving so HDR mode worked out nicely. I then imported those pictures into Instagram to share with the world. I did not touch the image once inside Instagram. No edits, no blur… just posted it out there. To me, these look incredible.

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Yes Instagram is a love/hate product. I think more people should embrace it and help it grow to where it’s a love/love product.

But that’s just me.

Thanks for reading and happy shooting,

Scott

PS, please join me on Instagram by searching for my profile: scottwyden, and don’t forget to join me every Friday for #SelfPortraitFriday

By Scott

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385 comments

  1. I’ll take the other side of the coin here. I have never seen an instagram filter that I thought helped an image, infact, I think most of them are simply ghastly.

    Taking the filters out of play, when I first looked at Instagram, their terms of service were simply terrible. I am not a supporter of any service that makes a blatant license grab. That may have changed since I have looked, but with my dislike of their filters, there really wasn’t much point in following up.

    1. I understand that many people dislike the filters, but my point is that you don’t need to use the filters to post images.. My examples in this post have no filters. They’re straight from the iPhone’s camera, cropped in Instagram and shared.

      As far as licensing goes… All social networks that enable you to post photos must put language in there that gives them the right to post it. I’m not saying I agree with the languages used, but legally the companies have to do something.

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