May 22nd 2019 archive

22
May
2019

Week Ten: Instagram Photo

categories: Uncategorized

DOOR QUOTES // POST FOUR

Click above to view!

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

For my photograph this week, I knew I wanted to capture the front door of my family home in the countryside. My mum loves to garden and hence, I had to include her potted plants in the shot as it added so much more to the image. To be honest, this picture was captured in a very amateur way. I was dressed in my pyjamas and crouching down not just to get the perfect shot, but more hide myself from anyone driving or walking past the house! That being said, I love how this image turned out, with the light hitting the window. I took this once again on my trusty iPhone 8 with the rear camera and no flash. I definitely tampered with pressing down on the screen to adjust the exposure as I was taking photos as it was really sunny outside. I ended up taking 11 different photos of this door from different angles, but settled upon this one as the composition just seemed right. Once again I didn’t want my images to be set within the square frame. I will definitely try to do so with future posts, but I just couldn’t bare to crop out the plants or top of the door frame for the sake of a square post. This affordance in allowing user’s to chose the square or not is an affordance that I am grateful for. In terms of editing for this image, I decided to use VSCO again. Although Instagram
has adequate tools now which cater for image perfecting, VSCO has the trusty C1 filter which I knew I wanted to use in order to give more life to the photo. I changed and played with the exposure and contrast controls also as the original image (shown to the right) was quite dark. I also had to straighten the image a little due to my crouched positioning while taking the photo causing it to become slanted (a result of my nervous self hoping to not be caught out in her pyjamas by her neighbours). This style of editing is very similar to my own style in regard to my personal content posted on Instagram. I use the same editing app’s and filters. The only real difference here is that, with certain content there are different expectations. For instance, taking photo’s of doors and then editing them takes me less time than if it was an image of myself. On my personal Instagram, most of the content features myself in the photo. Hence, I take a lot more time and consideration picking out the perfect photo, editing it so its perfect and looking at it for hours before uploading just in case I’m not satisfied with it. With doors, I feel more invited to be careless and simply ‘ordinary.’

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

This was the only set image I took during the week featuring a door. I keep reminding myself of good opportunities to whip out my iPhone and snap something but I become forgetful. I believe I also have set an expectation upon myself to find the most interesting doors to post, which becomes annoying when doors in general are quite boring. Yet, this is clearly not the point of this experimentation. The caption for this post reads: “”Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” – John Barrymore.” With no hashtags to clutter the caption, it looks short and sweet. Once published, this image didn’t receive so well in comparison to my other photo from last week. I’m not sure if it was due to the hashtags, geo-tag or the timing of the post which affected this. Instagram only allows its users to understand why their content is or isn’t doing so well through it’s “business account” feature. Because my account is personal (although public), I do not have access to how many people may have seen it but not liked (such as Twitter impressions) or how many people found my post through tags. Maybe for my next posts I should go all out with the hashtags to see if that makes a difference to traffic. I did upload this image in the morning on a Sunday which is probably the absolute worst time to post (everyone is either hungover or asleep still).

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

We hit 10 impressions on Twitter with this distribution! *(sarcasm)* I definitely vow to try and include tags next time as not much is happening on this social network in regard to my content. However, Twitter being more ‘word’ based as opposed to image, that is understandable. Didn’t forget about Tumblr, where I also uploaded a link to my photo. I just realised that I also have gotten a follower on my Tumblr page – a bot. Exciting. Furthermore, I added the location of where this photo was taken, Drouin, Victoria, to my post. Not many people know of my hometown. Quite frankly, if I click on the geo-tag itself, I am bound to see one of my friends posts in the “top posts.” Therefore, I knew distributing this photo with a location was bound to not result in any traffic but for a more organised approach I didn’t want to leave it out.

22
May
2019

Week Ten: Instagram Video

categories: Uncategorized

DOOR QUOTES // POST THREE

Click above to view!

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

Venturing out into the city during class time, I found inspiration within this beautiful RMIT building. I knew immediately that this would fit perfectly on my Instagram page as it fits the vision of creating content in the moment; no planning required. The amateur Instagram user way. I took this video on my iPhone 8 once again, with the rear facing camera. I knew the beauty of this building would not be showcased as nicely within the square Instagram frame, especially because I pan down towards the door at the end. However, I hope with the rest of my content I experiment with the Instagram camera itself, to test how differently my videos could become or be received. I’ve noticed that my content has become intertwined with two of Manovich’s “themes” that he researched. One is clearly focused on the “ordinary” Instagram photos, content which is fixated on not being professional but rather personal to the user. The second I tried not to conform to as much, but have in the sense that I have focused on editing and the composition of my content more heavily than an amateur may. This is Manovich’s investigation of “professional” content where authors create “classic aesthetics.” (Manovich, 2016, pg. N/A). I knew I wanted to experiment with video filters which were not on the Instagram app. The affordances in regard to correcting the video’s brightness or contrast on the software itself are constraining. There aren’t any. In fact, you only have the option to choose a filter or trim the video. Hence, I found the application “Chromic,” which although only lets me choose a filter out of seven options and change the brightness, it was enough to satisfy. I chose the filter ‘FMO’ which makes the video appear as if it has been shot on “film.” This was a choice I wanted to make to link back to previous weeks where we discussed in the lecture how we can create “analogue” looking content without it actually being analogue. Once again this video was a one-shot recording. I loved how the cover picture looked originally so I didn’t feel it was to be changed. I left the video unmuted.

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

I ended up recording this video two times. The first time I panned down in a wonky way which resulted in the door not being centred and somewhat symmetrical in the middle of the frame. Once again, I took more consideration into the composition of this video than an “ordinary” user probably would. The caption of this post goes as follows: ““The doors of wisdom are never shut.” – Benjamin Franklin.” Although I previously said that I don’t want to put pressure upon myself by finding quotes that match the visual of the post, this one was just too good not to share (the building being part of RMIT University). Benjamin Franklin being a famous name meant that my use of hashtags would cater for that. I ended up using 10 hashtags for this video. When selecting hashtags, I don’t have a process which helps me pick out the best ones in order to achieve more traffic. Instead I think of them on the spot, and make sure they fit what is being shown rather than using popular hashtags like “love” and “like.” The video plays automatically on the app, but for some reason doesn’t on the Instagram website. I posted this video around the same time I posted my first one (1-2pm) and for some reason, this video did much better than my first. It gained more attention, however, not as many views. This could be due to the first post obviously being published the week prior and having more time to be seen. Yet, this shows how people who search through tags on Instagram may be interested more in “liking” than viewing, with the hopes that other users will give them “attention” back (this stemming from the ‘like4like’ culture Instagram has.)

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

As I will continue to do so with the rest of my posts, I added the geo-tag location at the top of my video. Labelled as “Carlton, Victoria, Australia,” this helped distribute this video to this locations hashtag. I then also shared this post through my Twitter and Tumblr accounts. On Twitter, this post only got 10 impressions. However, I never used any tags due to the fact that on this platform, the words themselves in the post can become tags. For example, if you were to search the key words of my caption such as “doors” or “wisdom,” my post may appear somewhere. On Tumblr I decided to add hashtags to the post itself, as well as add a description on the post. I could only do this because I didn’t use the toggle bar and rather shared the link itself.