Posted on May 24, 2019
The Softwares of Instagram
Networked Media 2019 Week 11
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Continuing to follow a specific aesthetic of nature themes and green tones, this time I wanted to experiment with the other facilities of Instagram, particularly the InstaStory function to see if I could be more creative with my video post. Instagram’s video recording function is very simple and only allows a “press and hold to record” style of video editing; no video effects of speed manipulation or animations to add. However, the Instastory has so many filters – ten times more than I remembered from using the filters months ago – and they have very creative and interesting animated filters and speed expansion/compression filters. So, when I was working on this week’s video, I browsed through the abundance of fancy filters, finding ones for face filters, and others that created an atmospheric mood such as raining snowflakes, fireflies, firey demon underworld a, etc. I finally decided on a ‘watercolor’ effect for its soft aesthetic that I thought would suit my green, nature tones. The watercolor effect also didn’t function just as an additional layer like the other Instagram filters, the effect had graphic movement itself that made my video look more alive.
For the photo, I once again tried to emphasize the greens of the image like last time and after seeing how the previous photo looked with green shadow tones, I really didn’t enjoy the effect and its visual interactions with the other post. So for this photo, I just boosted the saturation and to fix the jarring brownish reds that were also accentuated, I took a photo beforehand of green leaves with bright red berries so that the red hues could work in continuation with my Instagram feed.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
As we are looking at Software and Digital literacies this week, I wanted to access my authoring, publishing and distributing content on Instagram more critically of the software and functions of the platform. My photograph was published immediately after I was done editing the image, however publishing was slightly different with the video as I authored it through Instastory. The app allowed me to immediately download the Instastory when I was happy with it, and then when I went to the posting page, the video was saved in my gallery for immediate publication.
So, as expressed in my previous post, I appreciate the immediacy of authoring, publishing and distributing content that the app allows to which I can see how particular users thrive from this convenience, and how Instagram will thrive from enticing more users to use the app with this accessibility. However, where Instagram loses me, and I’m sure many other users from authoring and publishing within the app is the few extra steps that Instagram skips over, for example, the post-production phase of selecting the desired photos from a batch, and checking layouts to see how the photos look in aligning with each other. Especially with this phenomenon of “Instagramism” is rising in popularity, I doubt that users are planning their posts and creating their feeds all within the Instagram app.
Instagram has proven over the years to have evolved and accommodated to their users. For example, the editing functions of Instagram began as just selected filters that quickly grew out of date, but when people started experimenting with adjusting the light and colors of their images externally from the app, Instagram implemented their own editing functions for contrast, hues, color, tints, etc. which would have brought many users off external apps. I wonder if Instagram will start implementing planning software and galleries for users to store multiple photos for selection, as well as functions to layout the Instagram posts and scheduling capabilities. I want to hope that this will be implemented soon for the convenience, however, I don’t think there are enough users who utilize these functions to encourage Instagram to update their software to this level.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
I have not changed anything with my distribution process from the other times, though I have been interested to see what distributing has done to bring more clicks to my Instagram page. Perhaps I have not waited long enough, but I have not witnessed any traffic from Twitter or Reddit coming to my Instagram posts. If anything, I think the hashtagging in my Instagram description has done the most in bringing more eyes to my profile. Looking at the software functions of distribution and sharing between Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, similar to the authoring and publishing predicaments, a lot of the issues I am coming across can be fixed when externally from the app. However, as the goal of this project is to access the affordances of the Instagram app, there are many aspects that should be fixed of the owners of Instagram want to keep their users within the app. T