Late to the party (again), I only started using Instagram in anger earlier this year. This was entirely for my own benefit, as currently I only have a handful of followers. But in a small way, it totally transformed my photography.
Our big first tour of the year was down through Spain to Morocco. And of course, as usual, I took thousands of photos with my Lumix DMC-TZ100. Well … maybe they are only holiday snaps. But what I got from putting the best on Instagram was quite interesting:
- I started thinking about an audience for my photos (even if it is only my mum, my kids and a handful of random friends) so I put more thought into the composition of my pictures
- Every evening I would sit down and cull. Now this is a very good discipline. You have to select a handful of your best images of the day to post
- Having to crop the image to a square is equally interesting. You start to think about the key story your photo is trying to tell
- Not only did I experiment with the filters on Instagram, I started to play around much more with the Developer tools in Adobe Lightroom. Thus far, I have only used Lightroom to catalog and organise my photos (and boy is it a fabulous piece of software for that). But on that last trip I really delved into the photo enhancement capability
So the upshot is Instagram has given me a kick to start taking my photography much more seriously. I have bought a new camera, enrolled on some Lightroom courses, and I am so looking forward to my next big trip. PLUS, I met some great people on my travels in Morocco, and I am now loving their Instagram feeds and following where they are now.
Here is my Instagram feed, looking a bit neglected at present, I’m waiting for some decent weather here in Nottingham to get out more and start playing with my lovely new toy: a Canon 250D no less. If you are an Instagrammer too, then I’d love for you to follow me 😉
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