Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practising?
Agnes Wong – a social media influencers from Hong Kong, who is actively on Instagram and Youtube whilst gaining 141 thousand Instagram followers. Most of her distributed photo is about her daily livings, food sharing and product advertising with different cosmetic brands. There is not an accurate date of when she started her career as a social influencer, however, it is certain that she becomes familiar in Hong Kong since 2017 (the debut of his brother – Boris Wong, as a Youtuber), as his brother released videos with the frequent appearances of herself that make herself popular. This is the video which makes Agnes becomes well-known.
What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?)
The photo published on April 8 2020. She did not title this photo but from the caption and location she enclosed, it can be identified the photo is named as ‘Sunny Slide Up Eggs’. The ‘location’ function is provided by Instagram which is designed for users to show where the photo is located. Yet, Agnes used the function to emphasize the theme of its photo. The action from her, broaden the affordances of how users can use the ‘location’ function before publishing the photo on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram記錄我人生中第一次成功煎的太陽蛋🍳 因為很怕會煎焦 所以永遠只會弄炒蛋 但原來是不會的 而且打蛋後慢慢等待它變熟就可以 (對不起我現在才知道) 反也不用反 可以洗少個鑊鏟 分享完畢
Translation of the caption: “Recording the first success of frying a sunny side up egg in my life. I was afraid to make the egg burnt so I am always doing scrambled egg. However, it doesn’t, all I have to do is to wait for the egg to be cooked in the pan (sorry I just knew it now), it is fine to not flipping it. I don’t even have to wash the spatula. Okay, end of sharing.”
With the photo or video, you are examining when was it produced (date)?
The photo is produced on 8 April 2020. (According to the posting date on Instagram) But presumably was produced sometime before the date it was published as it was shown to be edited before authorising it. Despite, it can be done in a short period of time.
How was the photo or video authored?
It is known that her photography is mostly taken and edited by her own, as she sometimes uploaded Instagram story of how she takes the photo. While some of the photos that include advertising component, it can be speculated that is taken either by his brother or the professional photographer provided by the cooperated brand. Agnes had mentioned she often used Adobe Lightroom and Snapseed to edit her photos (Boris, 2019). She also stated that she often adopts a composition that the object is centralized and in vertical. Meanwhile, for the colour arrangement, she recommended choosing tools that have the same colour tones with the background which could enhance the consistency of the whole photo. In ‘Sunny Slide Up Eggs’, it could see she put those techniques into practice, with the object in the centre, the plate is united with the background colour.
Indeed, from the editing perspective, Agnes was demonstrating how to use Snapseed and Lightroom accordingly to edit the lighting, saturation and colouring of the photo (Boris, 2019). This authorising allows her to create the cohesiveness in her Instagram gallery which makes the visualisation more aesthetic in the photo-centric social media, thus connecting her audiences by this visual experience (Palmer, 2014 p249). Yet, the photo was in vintage style which is trying to mimic the lo-fi look with a high saturation of colours and some granularity noise, which emulated a retro outlook (Palmer, 2014 p249).
How was the photo or video published?
Instagram photos recently Instagram photos in early (2014)
The photo she first published was dated on 20 May 2014, it was a great contrast when comparing to the posts she has in the present. In contrast, her posts in the past were edited without coherence and we can identify that some of her posts were using the filters by Instagram. Perhaps, some of the photos were authored by her Canon camera, but consider that she publish her photos by her smartphone which is fast and convenient (Halpern & Humphrey, 2016 p.2). In the editing apps (Lightroom & Snapseed) she uses, it can be found that users could directly share the authorised and edited photo through the application and archive them into Instagram. Although it is unknown whether Agnes did something like this, it proves that how convenient could users share their photos to social media sites.
Moreover, Agnes was not confined to what is on Instagram, for example, she would not crop the photo into ‘square’ nor label the location which is really a place in reality. Like what she had done in this post, she labels ‘Sunny Slide Up Eggs’ in the location which is literally not a place. Indeed, this is not limited to this post, also in other posts, she used this method to indicate her theme of the photo she published.
Meanwhile, her change in style is a strong example for other Instagram users or digital photograph authors like me to publish photos in their unique ways. The plethora of apps allow manual manipulation to edit photos or add filters before or afterwards (Halpern & Humphrey, 2016 p.8), hence, users could utilise them to develop their own style and establish their own ‘brand’ in the Instagram gallery. Agnes’ work in integrity and collaboration would definitely be an insight for her audiences to imitate or to reference, yet it also provides her the opportunity to make money by Instagram.
How was the photo or video distributed?
Regarding to the nature of Instagram, the photo was distributed to her 141 thousand followers on the platform. Despite of this, the ‘share’ buttons allow her followers to share her photo to their friends who are not her followers, the act of re-distribution broaden the coverage of the photography. Also, the ‘comment’ function could let her audiences to leave a message on her post to interact with her or to tag their friends to check her post. This act also helps Agnes to approach more users. Other than that, some of her posts were sponsored advertisement that cooperated with various beauty brands, she used different kinds of tags and hashtags in those posts that make her reaching a larger proportion of audiences. With the influences of different brands sponsoring her, it boosts up her popularity.
For other Instagram practitioners, it is recommended to exploit the usage hashtags to optimise the visibility of the posts and reaching more audiences. They could pay to use sponsor ads so as to gain more audiences’ view and tailored to specific audiences ranging from gender and age to interests.
References
Boris 2019, ‘Revealing the scene behind of our IG photo? Sharing the detail and fundamental colour editing skills’, 23 April, Youtube, Hong Kong, viewed on 20 April 2020
Halpern, M. and Humphrey L. 2016, ‘Iphoneography as an emergent art world’. New Media and Society, Vol 18, no. 1, pp. 1-8
Palmer, D. 2014, ‘Mobile Photography’, in G Goggin and L Hjorth (eds), The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, 1st edition, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 249-255.
