Week 9 – Photo
How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
The first photo post on my new account @tech.design.rmit was authored very pretty simply. I used the main camera on my Samsung s10e with a slight zoom in (as it naturally has a bit of a fisheye effect) to take photos of my Nintendo Famicom and Famicom Disk System on my bed, providing a nice red background for the red, black and white devices. The framing of the shots masked the mess of wires behind the system in the first shot, giving a clean and tidy aesthetic, which was then contrasted by the uneven and messy nature of the second photo, showing off the poor design choice. The square frame of the Instagram camera was not too much of a creative hinderance, as the shots I was taking were reasonably tight to begin with. However, it did affect the angles I could shoot at, making the frame a little tighter than I would otherwise be comfortable with so as to ensure that the furniture in my room wasn’t visible. This photo was taken without flash, as the lighting in my room is bright enough already. Despite this, some image adjustment was required, as the exposure looked a bit dim on the first photo and a bit washed out on the second. I used the Juno filter on the first image to try and deepen the reds, combined with an increase in brightness and decrease in contrast to bring out darker spots and then balance out the image overall. The second frame was essentially the opposite, with no filter being used and opposite brightness and contrast controls being adjusted to try and bring some more dynamic range to what initially was a rather grey looking photo. This process is not very normal to me, as on my main account I usually either take photos with no effects and minimal cropping, or I go completely overboard with filters and corrections for comedic effect. Given the more almost commercial nature of an account such as this, I felt that striking somewhere in the middle would allow me to define an aesthetic while not swinging too far in either silly or boring territory. I would like to continue this experimentation in the future.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I took a couple of images before I got the one I ended up posting, but these had poor angles that didn’t show off the Famicom and the Disk System as well as the ones I ended up posting. A text caption was added giving a brief description of what was in the scene, as well as explaining my feelings about the design choices made by Nintendo between the two devices. I thought after posting that it sounded a bit sarcastic and corporate, despite the sentiment being sincere, so for future postings I should work on how I write my captions. I also tagged the image with #nintendo, #famicom, #famicomdisksystem and #design, all Nintendo and design appropriate tags, matching the subject of the images. No geotagging or account tagging seemed necessary given the content of the posting, however future devices might benefit from posting tangentially related locations or accounts, like maybe factories or company marketing accounts for a bit of flair.
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
https://twitter.com/melbourneandco1
https://techdesignrmit.tumblr.com/
I chose to distribute my posts to Instagram, as well as to Twitter and Tumblr, as both of these platforms are friendly to the Instagram format of images and videos, as well as natively interfacing with Instagram itself.
On Instagram, the photo was distributed to my handful of followers, as I advertised the new account person to person, as well as through the explore tab. The use of hashtags and a geotag means this will reach some specific groups better, as well as the interactions had on the image itself propelling the account further. I also posted a disappearing story to inform followers of the new post.
The Twitter and Tumblr accounts might have a harder time getting exposure, but the process of distribution on these other platforms is very simple, with Instagram allowing syncing of accounts between platforms. Both accounts share the same name (or as close as was allowed) as the Instagram account, hopefully providing a logical connection and increasing the potential for people who find one to find the others. The Tumblr account was created new, however the Twitter account was repurposed from another one that I’d made previously, meaning that the username is correct but the handle is different. This hopefully shouldn’t affect exposure or branding, as it’s still easily searchable by tech.design.rmit.
