Week 11 – Photo

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA2ZckuAiGV/

How did you author the photo?

This photo was taken with my phone while on a walk in Fitzroy gardens, I enjoyed the autumn colours on the trees, but also noticed their collars to deter possums and questioned if this was a good or bad design. Norman (2002, p.17) states that good design is not noticeable, but bad design is obvious. On one hand these collars are obvious on the trees and might be considered ugly, but they serve a function and protect the trees from damage, so from this perspective, they are a good design.

I wanted to capture the mood and atmosphere of the gardens during autumn, so I was careful to choose a composition of the tree-lined path and colorful fallen leaves. Manovich notes this style of photos as Instagramism,

‘I use the term Instagramism to refer to the aesthetics of designed photos on Instagram and other platforms. I proposed that the key aspect of Instagramism is the focus on mood and atmosphere rather than representation or communication of emotions. (Manovich, page 6)

The original photo was very green, but I wanted to exaggerate the autumn colours I noticed on my walk. I used Adobe Lightroom application on my phone to adjust the photo. I chose a filter called Artistic 3 to give red colours and then I modified the parameters of the exposure, shadows and lights. Adobe software is common with designers and creatives using Instagram, which Manovich refers to as Adobe Class ‘my term for young professionally educated creatives working in design, video, social media or fashion. Adobe Creative Cloud software dominates the market for design and media authoring. (2016, page 6)

How did you publish the photo?

I published the photo to my profile in its original 16:9 landscape format, using one of the affordances of Instagram to expand the image while posting, instead of the default 1×1 square format. When followers view the photo in their feed, they see the full landscape image in the 16:9 format. However, in the grid on my profile the image is cropped to a square. The cropped image still captures most of the autumn colours and the collars on the trees, but I do feel it loses some of the atmospheres of the path narrowing into the horizon. I used the geolocation tag for Fitzroy Gardens and the caption The trees are blushing referring to the colours I adjusted in Lightroom. I included hashtags #nakedtree #fall #nopossumsallowed #blush.

How did you distribute the photo you published on Instagram to other social media services?

I distributed the photo to Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, shared automatically when posting. As the composition and landscape format of this photo was important to the style and mood of the image, Tumblr was the most appropriate platform to share this on. The image is displayed on Tumblr in the 16:9 format with a link to the Instagram post along with the caption and hashtags. When you click on the image to enlarge, it maintains the original format. I feel that Tumblr is good for displaying photography without many constraints.

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