Through the process of authoring, I am realising how advanced the iPhone camera quality is and I think the fact that I cannot afford a DSLR camera is not as much of an issue as I originally perceived. As students studying communication, media, and design we are constantly taking photos and using our phones. Hence, the fact that the device we carry around in the back of our pocket can produce these images still shocks me. I think we often take for granted how technologically advanced our society is simply because we have grown up knowing nothing different. Yet, this experience of authoring my own works amplifies the progress and development of technology and shows that now you don’t need the big cameras to achieve high-quality photos.
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Like my previous week’s work, I again authored this image using the rear-facing camera on my iPhone 11. However, from the outset instead of taking the photo in the Instagram app itself, I quickly switched to my camera application. Although in last week’s work I was able to use Instagram’s built-in camera with little to no issues, this week was a different experience.
Due to the size and length of the object, I was photographing in order to capture the full boat, I had to stand further back. This then meant that there was a lot of background in the image which I was not intending to show. Whilst I tried to take the photo on Instagram, because you are unable to zoom in and out or even edit and crop the image you take, I ended up switching to my camera app. This is a constraint that I had never encountered, and I believe it is possibly the reason many users 
don’t use the app itself to author their images.
Using my photo application, it ensured that I could stand further back but zoom in to still show detail. Through doing this it also allowed me to crop the photo through Apples editing features to cut out the background which I didn’t want on display.
When I returned to the Instagram app to further edit the image, I wanted to continue with the aesthetic I had used previously. With Manovich discussing Instagram as an “aesthetic society” (Manovich 2016, p.1), I wanted to adapt that for my own account and create my own aesthetic that is recognisable. Therefore, I applied the filter ‘Gingham’ at 100% to match the photo of the bookshelf and continue with the theme.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
As aforementioned above, I took a few tries to get the desired image. When deciding on the photo I wanted to post, I chose the one that when was shot at the most horizontal eye level as it meant there were fewer shadows on the photo.
Similarly, to my previous posts I captioned my photograph with a quote about design. This post included the quote “The details are not the details. They make the design.” – Charles Eames. To me, this related to the boat as every little bolt and block on top is what makes it unique and desirable to look at. It is the small details that gives the biggest impact.
Furthermore, to see if it made a difference in reach and audience engagement, for this post I included the location of Australia. Although it was broad, I wanted to see if it made a significant or any impact and to my surprise, I pretty much instantly got a like. This makes sense to me as Lozan suggests that “posts with a tagged location result in 79% higher engagement than posts without a tagged location” (Lozan, 2019).
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
For each of my posts, the distribution is very similar. Using the affordances that Instagram grants to easily share the content across various other platforms, I again chose to share my photo to Twitter and Tumblr. In the original post on Instagram’s platform, I enhanced the distribution through the use of hashtags again which included ‘#design #building #architecture #gooddesign #fitsperfectly #unique #manmade #photo’. These hashtags, like each post, are slightly different from the last as I am trying to find if there are certain words that trigger a specific audience and engagement in my content.
With distributing through the Instagram app, itself I again realised that my photo was not visible on Twitter’s platform, however, because I had already shared it I opted not to re-do the post individually and just leave it and see if any activity occurred.
References:
- Manovich, L 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA, pp. 1-148
- Lozan, T, 2019, Why Location Tagging On Instagram Matters (And How Can Businesses Benefit From It), Social Insider blog, viewed 19 May 2020, <https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/instagram-location-tag/>