APUGers on Instagram

Any APUGers on Instagram? We should have a hashtag. #apug is mostly, well, pugs.

Anyways, my username here is the same there. It's mostly iphone snaps but some film.

I am not there and will never be there. I do not believe in digisnapping.

Sirius Glass said:

I am not there and will never be there. I do not believe in digisnapping.

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No offense but this really made me laugh. I might put a phone ( turned off, stashed in the back somewhere ) in my jeep someday in case I get stuck, now that there are no phone booths anywhere. Maybe, someday, I keep telling myself it would be smart... GET OFF MY LAWN


PS Just ignore me. I don't own a cell phone and I've never even looked at instagram, so I have no idea whatsoever what I'm talking about! Still chuckling though about APUGers on instagram.

horacekenneth said:

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Same username there as here. I get more hits on my imported film shots than anything I take with the phone...

+1 to everything fixinater said. (same user name as on here)

Dead Link Removed

PS it's private because people kept flagging my nudes...

:munch:

Instagram?? I had never heard of it until I landed on this thread.

It's what it is, a flow of daily pics of low resolution, consumed or rejected instantly. Still it's a sort of "outreach" activity for an analog/hybrid photographer like me. As Fixcinater says, the analog stuff will draw more attention than the digital stuff. I get many questions from especially younger people who would like to jump on the analog train and in some cases I managed them to take the first step. We're all on a mission, right?
I'm exposed_material on Instagram, btw

My problem with instagram, twitter, facebook and other similar sites is: you get your result, you get the likes, followers, positive comments and the thrills from it. Fast result that gives ok looking pixels. But this pleasure is short lasting. And on the end it cost me more and more time and keeps me away from the thing I should do: make some prints. So I don't have any accounts on those sites any more. For me it is always the same: I get back what I put into. Fast result - fast fading.

Of course this is only me - I am not saying everybody should do as I do .

What's an Instagram? Really, I have no idea. Rhetorical question, no need to tell me. If I've gotten along this far w/o knowing what it is, I don't need to know.

momus said:

What's an Instagram? Really, I have no idea. Rhetorical question, no need to tell me. If I've gotten along this far w/o knowing what it is, I don't need to know.

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I can understand instagram, but for me twitter was/is totally strange concept. First time I heard about it on some late tonight show, and when I looked what it is about - I was amazed how such important thing can be so huge.
I guess I am too old - I get impressed when they land on the Mars or on a comet, or when they make flying car ...

Same handle as here, I infrequently post all three varieties of photos: iPhone images, pictures of silver prints and pictures of Piezography carbon prints.

I still can't figure out why some people think they have to whizz on digital photography. It doesn't matter if it's wet plate, or silver, or digital, a great picture is still a rarity.

I'll follow all you guys, and if you all follow me, we'll all have six followers each.

I like Instagram. You can find a lot of analog photographers and create a feed of your interests without all the FB back and forth. My user name is johnb.

I don't mind other people using Instagram. I tried it for myself for a while, but it was really sad to me just how momentary everything is. Like nobody has time to stop and look at a photograph for more than a second or two, only to continue to the next one, and then never looked at again. Too fleeting, not enough time spent with each picture to truly appreciate it.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I don't mind other people using Instagram. I tried it for myself for a while, but it was really sad to me just how momentary everything is. Like nobody has time to stop and look at a photograph for more than a second or two, only to continue to the next one, and then never looked at again. Too fleeting, not enough time spent with each picture to truly appreciate it.

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It's a side effect of information overload bound up with social peer pressure.

The Internet is nothing if not the classic example of information overload. Remember, this was Bill Gates' original goal. Information at your fingertips. It just happened in a way that he never anticipated. Life usually works that way.

With everyone's personal social interactions now also tightly controlled by the Internet no one wants to be perceived as being left out or behind. The fate worse than death is to be challenged "Did you see that?" and not to be able to say yes. Or to have to lie and hope the questioner doesn't ask for details. So manic surfers try to look at everything.

Unfortunately, everything is a really, really big number. And without the benefit of an Interstellar time-dilation experience* seeing everything is almost impossible. And the amount of non-dilated time available to see any one item becomes almost infinitesimally small.

So people end up mindlessly flipping through everything while thinking about and retaining nothing, in the desperate hope that they won't miss anything and end up on the outside of the social acceptance window looking in. The demographic group to have most quickly understood this and put it to work for them making money are the celebrities.

"Did you see Kim Kardashian's new fully nude photos??"

Ken

* The astronaut waited 23 years in orbit for their return while performing his lifetime's research, yet they were only gone for a little over three hours...

abeku said:

It's what it is, a flow of daily pics of low resolution, consumed or rejected instantly. Still it's a sort of "outreach" activity for an analog/hybrid photographer like me. As Fixcinater says, the analog stuff will draw more attention than the digital stuff. I get many questions from especially younger people who would like to jump on the analog train and in some cases I managed them to take the first step. We're all on a mission, right?
I'm exposed_material on Instagram, btw

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Thanks for this insight.

I've always rejected instagram as being very nearly the antithesis of what photography is all about (for me). I did not realize that one could upload anything other than a heavily manipulated digital image produced by a cell phone.

I may give it a try....outreach as you say.

The chief difficulty lies in crystallizing what is actually important information. It takes too much work to weed through all the garbage to get to the nuggets that matter.

Back to the pictures. Personally, when I look at a photograph I prefer to spend some time with it. It's best when it's an actual print that I can be close to, maybe even hold in my hand. A very good friend of mine took a workshop with Minor White back in the day, and one of the important exercises was to close their eyes and rest, while an easel with a work of art was placed in front of them. Then they opened their eyes, and they were to sit in front of the art work and study it for (I think) half an hour. It's amazing what you find in a single work of art in that amount of time.

Instagram, conversely, is based on mass consumption of photographs. You are of course free to flip through the pictures at your own leisure, but I very much doubt anybody spends more than 5 seconds looking at a photograph.

The contrast is startling. When I look at other people's work I prefer to spend some time with each piece, which is why I fit so poorly with the way most internet applications intends for me to look at photography.

Ken Nadvornick said:

It's a side effect of information overload bound up with social peer pressure.

The Internet is nothing if not the classic example of information overload. Remember, this was Bill Gates' original goal. Information at your fingertips. It just happened in a way that he never anticipated. Life usually works that way.

With everyone's personal social interactions now also tightly controlled by the Internet no one wants to be perceived as being left out or behind. The fate worse than death is to be challenged "Did you see that?" and not to be able to say yes. Or to have to lie and hope the questioner doesn't ask for details. So manic surfers try to look at everything.

Unfortunately, everything is a really, really big number. And without the benefit of an Interstellar time-dilation experience* seeing everything is almost impossible. And the amount of non-dilated time available to see any one item becomes almost infinitesimally small.

So people end up mindlessly flipping through everything while thinking about and retaining nothing, in the desperate hope that they won't miss anything and end up on the outside of the social acceptance window looking in. The demographic group to have most quickly understood this and put it to work for them making money are the celebrities.

"Did you see Kim Kardashian's new fully nude photos??"

Ken

* The astronaut waited 23 years in orbit for their return while performing his lifetime's research, yet they were only gone for a little over three hours...

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horacekenneth said:

We should have a hashtag. #apug is mostly, well, pugs.

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How about #apuger ? No pugs there.

Given that if I post anything to Instagram, I'm granting them a non-exclusive license to do whatever the hell they want with it and use it to flog their own stuff without my permission or even being told in advance, let alone receiving any compensation, that's probably the last place I'd ever sign up (well, equal last with becoming another twit on twitter).

I don't see anything wrong with Instagram, though I am not a subscriber to it. I am much more of a socially active contributor on groups in Facebook. Nobody is forced to "be a photographer" with Instagram -- it is, after all, just another social networking tool (APUG is not), and in that regard, it works very well indeed, as does Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, et al. I saw that a friend has an Instagram account and got a laugh at a few of her pics. Just a bit of fun to record daily life.

Well instagram is just a tool. It depends on how we wield it. Most photographers would love to have the following, reach and likes some people do there!

Not sure why you APUG's not a social media tool, PDJ? Isn't it SM v 1.0 or so?

darkosaric said:

My problem with instagram, twitter, facebook and other similar sites is: you get your result, you get the likes, followers, positive comments and the thrills from it. Fast result that gives ok looking pixels. But this pleasure is short lasting. And on the end it cost me more and more time and keeps me away from the thing I should do: make some prints. So I don't have any accounts on those sites any more. For me it is always the same: I get back what I put into. Fast result - fast fading.

Of course this is only me - I am not saying everybody should do as I do .

Click to expand...

Thomas Bertilsson said:

The chief difficulty lies in crystallizing what is actually important information. It takes too much work to weed through all the garbage to get to the nuggets that matter.

Back to the pictures. Personally, when I look at a photograph I prefer to spend some time with it. It's best when it's an actual print that I can be close to, maybe even hold in my hand. A very good friend of mine took a workshop with Minor White back in the day, and one of the important exercises was to close their eyes and rest, while an easel with a work of art was placed in front of them. Then they opened their eyes, and they were to sit in front of the art work and study it for (I think) half an hour. It's amazing what you find in a single work of art in that amount of time.

Instagram, conversely, is based on mass consumption of photographs. You are of course free to flip through the pictures at your own leisure, but I very much doubt anybody spends more than 5 seconds looking at a photograph.

The contrast is startling. When I look at other people's work I prefer to spend some time with each piece, which is why I fit so poorly with the way most internet applications intends for me to look at photography.

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Beforehand sorry for any typos or format incorrectness. Writing on the phone and should get tapatalk...
I tried instagram and still have the account BUT never clicked with me.
Honestly it becomes much more of a social and contact game than a talent measure. Because of what you say. A shot is seen just a few seconds and someone clicks a button.

I shown my friend, who has quite a following in there, my mobile photo work. And he was quite impressed.
However it has gotten very little attention because building up contacts is a lengthly process. And afterall it is too much cost for the small benefit.

I like and do what Thomas says. Sometimes I keep looking at a photograph for long time for all that is. Especially if I print. Then I can devote time contemplating the photo.

I do participate viewing and commenting in flickr. Sometimes I am one of the few who write relevant comments. Because a like or a "Nice shot!" Is like nothing at all.
I do not post online because of this. It all ends being a views, likes and comments game which detracts my point of photograph. Documenting and enjoying what I do.
The point of attention span. I have a classmate who views instagram to lighten some of the boring classes. She is constantly scrolling, stops for a couole of seconds, hits the heart button and resumes scrolling...

I am 20. I do know what social media can be useful but tend to keep a distance because it can become a "improductivity black hole".
I am both traditional (music, photography) but following on the leading edge in other matters (tech). Afterall this is how you know the tools.
Then people "shoo" you when you are not in a certain network. Wait and when you realise you will feel enslaved.

I feel funny and amused in my marketing course when my professor pushes us to have a constant web presence. But then he complains about all the mails...

Same handle as here and everywhere else (instagram.com/rawhead).

I use Instagram to explore the possibilities of limited equipment (i.e., the iPhone camera). So all my shots are strictly taken with and processed on the iPhone.