1. How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

My iPhone 6’s rear-facing camera within the Instagram app was the chosen tool used to capture this green door. When taking this photo, it was very much an in-the-moment photo; a moment where I stopped and saw a green door in front of me, and clicked the shutter without much thought. From last week’s reading, Manovich’s conversation on casual photography resonated with me most clearly. His ideas surrounding the camera phone as being highly portable, accessible and immediate were all the crucial factors that allowed me to take this photo – and take it quickly. In terms of editing, I upped the warmth and brightness levels, and used my favourite sharpener tool to make the image have a real sense of vividness and clarity; matching my personal aesthetic of this Instagram account – images that are bright, clear and vivid.

 

2. How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

This photo was published almost as soon as it was taken, with only two alternatives to choose from. Keeping in my mind my own personal aesthetic, I decided on the image that believed was most centered and square, thus appealing to Instagram’s original and favourable square format. Thinking of a caption is one of my favourite parts of the publishing process, and I enjoy employing wit and using emojis to create light-hearted content that is not an effort for users to consume. For this specific post, I joked about green doors being “the good doors” and used some emojis to make the post slightly more eye-catching an expressive.

 

3. How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

To distribute this image slightly differently to my other posts, I shared it directly to twitter while I was publishing it to Instagram. This was a process made simple due to already linking my personal twitter account to Instagram, meaning tapping the ‘on’ button next to the ‘publish to Twitter’ icon was as complex as the task got.

However, I was dissatisfied with how the image looked – and in fact the lack of the image itself when shared on Twitter. Like I described a few week’s back, each social media platform uses slightly different software and a slightly different format. You can see in the side-by-side comparison below that the image I posted to Instagram is not accurately reflected in its twitter conversion – which only shows the caption and a link to the post. It is for this reason that I have always been hesitant to distribute an image that was created solely utilising the affordances of Instagram’s software, to another platform that uses a completely different format and software. A platform that also has a different demographic, reach, and purpose in communication. American Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk actually wrote an article which supports this notion – his article is slightly old now, but is a good explainer in terms of the differences between Twitter and Instagram (and there are more than just the appearance of photos – think reach, purpose, intended user).

Like all my other posts, I also distributed this image via my tumblr account, and through the use of several hashtags. While the reach of my tumblr account is extremely small (due to me only following very few people and vice versa), my hashtags were a deliberate choice of popular and wide-reaching ones; which I chose by exploring how frequently each hashtag is used. Broad yet relevant hashtags such as #door, #doorsofInstagram, #greenery have all been tagged millions of times in other users work. Hence, by me including them in my image, I am opening this image up to much wider audience and a much wider selection of relevant images as opposed to my limited 23 followers and 7 posts. If I were to distribute this image again, I might do some further research to find out what brand of door I captured, and tag the company in the post. This way I am linking the photo as a ‘real-life customer’ to show a company that I am not only using their product, but also showing any followers that like the doors, where they can purchase their own.