The Rose Chong Door Photo

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxvXzhHDsfi/

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

I took this photo at the Rose Chong costume hire store in Collingwood. I decided to go with this location as the shop is colourfully painted and unique looking. My overall theme for my Instagram is colourful, the colour scheme being mainly reds, pinks and oranges. Therefore, I thought that this door would go with the overall aesthetic of my feed. In order to incorporate the colour of the shop front I decided to take a long shot after a few attempts at medium and close up shots. For taking this photograph I used the front camera of my iPhone 7 and utilised the in built camera of the Instagram app. I used a similar methodology to my other posts which was to take a few photos and save them as drafts. I used the ‘Aden’ filter of the Instagram app and also change the contrast a bit to make the colours pop.At this point, I find utilising Instagram to author photographs very easy. The affordances of the Instagram camera as very similar to that of my normal iPhone camera. You can zoom by pulling with two fingers, focus by tapping on the subject and turn flash on with the click of a button. My previous experience with iPhone photography make it an intuitive and easy experience. In comparison to traditional cameras it is definitely a simplified process, which is both good and bad. There are not a lot of options in terms altering settings when taking the photo, which whilst it does make the process a lot simpler, it also does restrict your options. The constraints of Instagram have cultivated a specific aesthetic and themes due to the lack of options. Even with out of app editing, so much of the content is very similar that when someone utilises Instagram’s affordances and constraints to create something unique, it stands out.

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

For the curation process when choosing this image, my main objective was to choose an image that was framed correctly and was in alignment with my overall aesthetic. I believe that the photo I ended up choosing achieved both of those objectives. The caption I chose for this photo in the publishing process was more short and snappy in comparison to my previous captions, simply ‘Door to the wild side’, a reference to the leopard print on the building. I chose to include two relevant emojis as I have with most of the captions to my posts. I then followed the emojis by a number of hashtags relevant to the photo including #fashion, #wild and #leopard. I know for a fact that the #fashion hashtag is very popular as this article listed the most popular hashtags and fashion came up as number four.  Consequently, the photo did get a decent amount of engagement in comparison to the rest of my posts, including a comment. During the publishing process I chose to include the location ‘Collingwood, Victoria, Australia’ as I thought that this location could be fairly popular and therefore generate distribution.

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

For the distribution of this photograph, I again utilised the toggle feature of Instagram to simultaneously cross post the photo onto my Twitter and Tumblr. However, I also wanted to gain an understanding of the distribution process for a different platform. Instagram affords cross posting in the publishing process on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. As previously mentioned, I have been cross posting on Twitter and Tumblr, however I do not want to post on my personal Facebook and I’m sure the result would be similar to posting on Twitter and Tumblr. Therefore, I chose to share the Instagram post onto my Pinterest account. I was not sure how to go about it, so I used this article which outlines how to share your Instagram photos to Pinterest. It was actually a relatively simple process, but in saying that it is an extra step in the distribution process, and I’m not sure how much increased traffic it will generate.In addition to cross posting, I also utilised the geo filter and hashtags to distribute the photo. As previously stated, the geofilter ‘Collingwood, Victoria, Australia’, was included to increase traffic. I’d like to gain an understanding of whether popular geotags and hashtags generate more of less traffic in comparison to niche tags that generate less content. The reason I am considering this is because while niche tags reach less people that might mean the users searching the tag a0re more likely to engage with the content. However, using highly popular tags might cause the content to get lost in the mass of other posts. I believe that the Instagram algorithm displays the content in chronological order but the most engaged with posts are at the top of the feed. Therefore, unless the post receives a large amount of engagement it might get lost amidst the other posts.