My Love/Hate Relationship With Instagram

I am a relatively new Instagram user. Until I started Nautography, I didn't need any kind of dedicated platform to share pictures beyond Facebook or perhaps Twitter. But given that one of my stated goals is to share my experiences by way of my pictures, it made sense to try it.

Three weeks into this, I've developed a classic love/hate relationship with Instagram. Let me break it down for you:

Love:

1. Easy to use. It took me all of a few minutes to make an account and get it up and running. Set up a profile, find some folks to follow, and start posting pics. Boom. Instagram even does a good job suggesting other users for you based on what you post and who you follow.*

2. Versatile. You can just post quick pics, apply one of their pre-canned filters, or tweak attributes manually to get the image you want. I'm very much new to digital photo editing, but I'm amazed by what you can do on just your phone.

3. Mobile. Take it with you anywhere. Post pics you just took or have already taken. It's like having a miniature photo studio in your pocket.

4. Vast number of images. There are so may pictures on Instagram. So. Many. Pictures. I've already gotten some ideas about how to frame shots and what subjects to shoot just from browsing the suggested photos.

Hate:

1. Square images. For the love of all that is good and holy, WHY AM I STUCK WITH SQUARE IMAGES? For as long as I can remember, I have loved a good wide-angle, panoramic picture. I'd wager that over half of my existing photos will never be Instagram-worthy because I took advantage of some decidedly non-square field of view. Tall ships and ocean sunsets do not conveniently square images make!

I have started sorting my photo library into shots that are Instagram-worthy, and those that aren't. Given that I have a wealth of wide-angle images wasting away, I'd like to institute a new tradition: Wide-Angle Wednesday! My inaugural contributions are a pair of panoramic pictures (with a bit of digital enhancement post-scan) that I took with my old Kodak Advantix camera.

Sunset over the Pacific, San Diego, 2002

Point Loma, 2002

Enjoy! And happy #WideAngleWednesday!


*I will admit, this is a bit creepy, and at first Instagram thought I was a surfer who liked punk rock chicks. But as I post more, follow more people, and have more people follow me, the suggestions are a bit more...on point....