How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
The “good design” object for this week’s photo post I have chosen is a gel pen. I took the photo of the gel pen by using the built-in rear-facing camera on the Instagram software of my iPhone 7. Compared to my experience of employing a DSLR camera, the built-in Instagram camera lacks some basic functions, such as the ISO and Aperture, which both are important to the picture definition and aesthetics. Also, in terms of the picture pixels, the built-in Instagram camera’s is much lower than the DSLR’s.
While the photographing, I neared the gel pen as close as possible to capture the photo in order to make sure the words on the head of the pen and other details could be clearly seen. I also focused on the picture composition a lot, I tried a couple of ways to position the pen and I finally found the gel pen slightly tilts to the diagonal line of the photo is probably the best way to present it. Besides, I also tried to keep the head and the pointed end of the pen both in the one third line of the frame, and the most important is keeping the pen in the center of the picture perfectly. Although I took the photo in the daytime, but the original photo looks dark because it was captured interior without the help of ISO and Aperture. To solve this problem, I set up a bunch of white light and used the flash feature.
I used the Meitu app which is the most popular photo-editing app in China to edit the photo since I would like to try more editing tools to photographs and would compare the differences with the editing functions in the Instagram. I added the filter called “xiaomeihao” to the photo, and adjusted the contrast, brightness, saturation and other parameters. After exploring the affordances of the Meitu and I think the differences between Meitu and Instagram editing is the numbers and types of the editing tools. There are some features that Instagram does not afford, for instance, the sticker, the text and the edging (but I did not use one of them because it would take audiences’ attention away from the pen itself). In addition, the Meitu afford the square format cropping but in the Instagram, it is compulsory to use it.
How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?
Before I posted this image for this week, I recorded several images. The reason why I took several photos and was not satisfied with them is because I was very strict on the composition of the photo. As I mentioned in the authoring part, my requirements are the gel pen in the center of the image and the head and the pointed end of the pen both place at the one third line of the frame. It is not easy to achieve this requirement by handhold the phone to record the photo. In fact, what I took a lot of photos but I abandoned most of them and only use best one, actually presents that networked photography could be seen as “more disposable than film (Leaver, Highfield & Abidin 2020, pp.39). In contrast, Manovich points out that in the analogue photography era “the short color film rolls and cartridges were too important to waste on random photos.” (2016, p. 42). It shows networked photography is more integrated into everyday life.
I added some hashtags including a few Chinese hashtags, because the brand of the gel pen is a famous and popular Chinese brand and I think it would be useful to use a few hashtags related to it in the theory. Moreover, I also used hashtags #study and #studyaccount, there are a lot of pen posts within these two posts, therefore they also can help me to get likes. Besides, I added the geo-tag before I uploaded the image post, in response to the analysis I made last week, I was going to use the Chinese version geo-tag which is the “曲阜孔廟” and I will discuss more in the distribution section later.
I published the photo with a mid-length caption, about the “good design”. I was satisfied with the “three sections form” text caption and I decided to use it throughout my six posts, the two differences I made to the first post are, firstly, I changed the closed question to the open question in the end in order to garner more participations; secondly, I tried to paragraph the text caption and had the structure more clearly. These captions are benefit to form and develop the brand loyalty, and trust (Fournier 1998, pp.343-344).The text caption included saying:
How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?
As I mentioned in the publication part, I changed the geo-tag from English version into Chinese version but the exact location keeps the same. I already analyse the differences between the two geo-tags in my last blog, I would do a short recall here: the Chinese government blocks the Instagram within Chinese area, therefore, the posts within “曲阜孔廟” should be much less active than the posts within “Temple of Confucius, Qufu” in theory. However, the posts within “曲阜孔廟” in fact are more active than “Temple of Confucius, Qufu” according to my observation. Certainly, Instagram does not present the exactly posts numbers within each geo-tag to users. I observed and recorded the situation of each geo-tag for one week, and defined the “active” according to how many posts are uploaded per day within each geo-tag and how many posts are uploaded for the week within each geo-tag. Finally, I got the outcome that “曲阜孔廟” is more “active” than “Temple of Confucius, Qufu”. The outcome is not precise because it does not rely on the theoretical texts, but I would make a practicing which uses the geo-tag “曲阜孔廟” in the next few posts and see what would be happened in regard to distribution?
I used these hashtags to distribute my post on Instagram, #design #designs #gooddesign #晨光文具 #晨光本味 #手帐 #gelpens#stationery #chinesestationary #china#study #studyaccount, which including some Chinese hashtags which are the brand of the gel-pen #晨光文具 #晨光本味 and journals #手帐, I think using Chinese hashtags would quickly find the communities which interested in these genres. Another distributing approach is toggling Tumblr and Facebook buttons which allowed for automatic posting the photo onto these two social platforms. In fact, I would like to toggle the Weibo button and distribute the post on Weibo as well, because the brand of the gel-pen in the photo is the famous and popular Chinese local brand and it has a huge number of fans on Weibo. If I distribute the post onto Weibo, it would attract much attention from the brand fans and it would be helpful to expand the distribution area and impact when Weibo users repost the post. However, although I had tried many times to toggle and my Weibo account has already connected to the Instagram account, the post never showed on the Weibo page, I guess because Instagram is blocked within China area, so any information from Instagram would be blocked out at any Chinese social platforms.
My Post on Facebook
Reference List
Fournier, S 1998, ‘Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 343-353.
Leaver, T, Highfield, T & Abidin, C 2020, ‘Aesthetics’, in Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, Cambridge, United Kingdom. pp. 39-74.
Manovich, L 2016, ‘Part 1: Casual Photos’, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA., pp. 24-57.