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How did your author the photo you recorded for upload to Instagram?
For my final post, I wanted to find one more example of bad design. While looking for ideas, I came across a pair of tangled earphones which reminded me how frustrating it is to untangle them. The earphones created an interesting looking pattern while tangled which inspired me to set up a ‘designed image’ (Manovich 2016, p. 99) with a focus on creating ‘abstract patterns, colours, shapes, and textures’ (Manovich 2016, p. 99). To achieve this I set the earphones up on a glass table with a carpet underneath that created a strange oil painting like effect and gave my image a much more aesthetic look than the plain background design of my week ten’s blog. Taking the image was a challenge, I had to constantly reposition myself to avoid getting in the shot.
After I took the image I cropped it using the square Instagram function. I was concerned this would add another constraint to the editing process but it was successful. Next, I looked around for different filters and found one which turned my grey background a dark blue then decided to further enhance this using as many of the advanced editing features Instagram has to offer. One of the most effective features was the vignette which darkened the background to highlight the subject. I was surprised by the capabilities of Instagram, although not perfect, I was able to create effects that would not be possible using my phone’s default image editor.
How did you publish the photo you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I applied similar strategies used in my week ten blog by setting up a place with good lighting and background to enhance aesthetics. Unlike last week, the scene was much more complex to work with as I was taking the image on a glass surface and had to avoid getting my reflection in the shot, meaning I had to do retakes before choosing the best one. It was surprising how ‘everyday objects… [can] acquire very different meanings depending on how they are photographed’ (Manovich 2016, p. 39).
I have been practising copywriting and tried a different style for the caption by using a rhetorical question. “Don’t you hate it when this happens?” I believe tangled headphones is something many people can relate to. Looking back on the captions used in my older posts I see things I could have done better, captioning helps enhance your image by attracting attention to it and giving it meaning.
How did you distribute the photo you published on Instagram to other social media services?
This week I focused on using more emotive language in the hashtags for my image as I had some success with this strategy in week ten and it also helped simplify the process of coming up with new and engaging ideas for hashtags. These included #tangledearphones, #baddesign, #annoying and #earphones. I found it’s difficult to avoid a ‘rinse and repeat’ (Leaver, Highfield, Abidin 2020, p. 158) approach when distributing posts because of quarantine, which has prevented me going outside my home so I haven’t been able to experiment with different distributing methods like geotags.
My Instagram has been linked with my Tumblr which allows me to automatically share the same post between platforms, however, to see how to process varies I uploaded manually. This was simple, all I needed to do was add my image and caption and unlike Instagram, it didn’t ask me to edit the photo which made it a speedier process and had no Instagram watermarks. Flickr was a similar process as in the past three weeks. I find it a more limited platform than Instagram and Tumblr as it’s primarily for sharing images rather than social features like hashtags, although these still exist.
References
Manovich, L. 2016, ‘Part 1. Casual Photos’, ‘Part 3. Instagramism’, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA. pp. 24-57, 71-113.
Leaver, T., Highfield, T., Abidin, C., 2020. ‘Chapter 7. From the Instagram of Everything to the Everything of Instagram’, Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, United Kingdom. pp. 150-165.
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