How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I took this photo using my new iPhone 8 using the rear camera. Despite it being dark outside I didn’t want to use the flash as I generally don’t like the way it can wash out or overexpose the subject, particularly because the see-through door gave enough light by itself. I found this subject suited the square dimension of Instagram better than my previous subjects. The door itself is square, and I quite liked the look of the timber walls as it kind of fit into that more simple, bare Instagram aesthetic talked about in last week’s reading (Manovich, 2016). After taking the shot I added the “Clarendon” filter, but reduced it to about “40” so that it wouldn’t have the over-edited look. While going through this process I was reminded about how quickly and easily you can go through the whole authoring process, while still producing a decent looking photo. I took the photo in the app, once I was happy with it clicked next and then added a filter, reduced it, added a caption, my location and published it to Twitter and Tumblr by just swiping right on both and it was ready to go – all in less than a minute. This is obviously done deliberately to keep you on the Instagram app rather than using other editing software apps like VSCO. While the other apps may help to create a better looking shot, the constraints are more prevalent as you have to first save the photo to your phone and then upload to Instagram, and it definitely makes the authoring process longer and a bit more complex (still easy, but not as easy as doing it all on Instagram).
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to
Instagram?
The publication process for this photo was straightforward. I didn’t take many photos because I knew what I was trying to capture. My one concern was whether to try and capture the whole front part of the store (including the sign on the wall) etc and to not cut off any of the objects in the photo. However that could have thrown off the dimensions of the shot so I decided I wanted a shot that focused on the door and the light inside, and the cut off objects on the sides wouldn’t really matter as they were secondary to the focus of the shot. My caption was stupid pun, to be honest when I walked past the bar I wasn’t thinking about the name of it but after I took the shot and added the location I knew I had to use it. I added the location as well because I think that is one other significant way of creating traffic on your profile alongside hashtags. Particularly popular restaurants and bars will have Instagram accounts and will like photos they’re tagged in, and while it did not happen on this occasion I like this strategy. This week (for both the video and the photo) as an experiment I didn’t add any hashtags to the actual caption, but after publishing I added a comment with as many hashtags as I could think of. I really liked this result because if the comment is long enough, all you can see when scrolling is “view 1 comment” and not the ugly messiness of heaps of hashtags that can make the post look a bit tacky in my opinion. Also, I am able to add heaps of hashtags and hopefully create more traffic rather than just three hashtags like I did last week.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to
other social media services?
I published this photo on both Tumblr and Twitter which was again made super easy after I linked the accounts in the first week. What made this week different was how I added a hashtag comment to my Instagram account so to not clutter the actual caption and to be able to hopefully generate more traffic on the publication. However for obvious reasons this does not translate well when publishing onto Twitter and Tumblr as you can’t edit twitter posts to add hashtags and because Tumblr is just sharing a picture of the Instagram post I can’t add hashtags to that either. So While this is easily my favourite hashtag strategy for Instagram it doesn’t translate well with the other apps. My strategy of using hashtags and generating traffic over different platforms would then be determined by the importance of each platform to me. For example if my main target audience was on Instagram I would stick with this strategy, however if my main audience was on all of the platforms I may go back to my strategy from last week.
The Cellar d00r @ The Cellar Door Ringwood https://t.co/QLYFFhZ350
— James (@door_ene) October 11, 2018