IG

IG stands for Instagram, an application for the iphone. Incredibily wonderfull app and it was declared as application of the year by Apple recently (as far as I remember). But today I won’t post photos, just some sort of thoughts about IGers people of IG community.

Firstly, if you own an Iphone and like to take occasional shots of the life around you and want to share them rightaway IG is exactly what are you looking for. It is completely different social network, mainly oriented on the photos and photographers. Some people say that IG degrades the pictures after applying of IG filters. I do like to apply filters, photos look more interesting with lomo-style processing, all is from my point of view of course, even if some information is lost (who need details on 3.5 inch screen?). However, every IGer have a choice, to apply a filter and “kill” some details or post a photo in a natural way, i.e. without any styles or other modifications. At the same time Instagram is becoming more and more popular among photographers and iphone lovers, triple grow says a lot, it’s over 15 mln people on the IG at the moment! Whatever, you can read a hundreds (or even more) of opinions about Instagram on a different forums or photography related communities, I’m not going to abuse or praise the IG, I just want to say a couple of words about community and shots on Instagram.

I’ve joined IG somewhere in July’11 and first couple of weeks I didn’t even know how to use it properly, how to attract viewers and followers. I couldn’t find any fundamental and helpfull advises about how to boost my popularity and I’m still not popular till now. However, days go by and after some time I got in, I found that IG can be really exciting and interesting rather than twitter for instance, but some things I can’t understand even now. One of these tricks is when some “photographers” share DSLR shots in the comminuty that was originally made for iphone shooters and for iphone sharing application. I’m asking myself why? Why do people shoot on expensive Canon or Nikon cameras, shrink the photo and post it on IG? To be popular? To make shots better than on iphone cameras and get more likes than others? To stand out from the crowd? Obviously yes, but is that fair comparing to other users? I really hope that IG administration will reconsider the policy and make the corrections in the terms of the sharing of the photos, especially in the source or how this shot was taken and on which camera.

For my IG account I shoot only on IPhone (3GS currently, its camera could be better but I hope to upgrade to 4S soon). I believe that if you are really good shooter it doesn’t matter which equipment you use, for glamour photography (or any other photography where quality of the shot is important) it does matter, but for candid portraits, street photography or social photography the vital principle is to get the shot “right-here-right-now” IPhone and IG sometimes is enough. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens when we see the moments that have to be photographed, but we don’t have our DSLR in our hands, your cameraphone is the only way to get the “shot”. I wrote above, that some people think that IG filters “kill” the details, same people say that IG shots can’t compete with DSLR in the terms of creativity? Really? I don’t think so, creativity mostly lies in the eye and mind of the photographer and less in the advanced equipment.

In conclusion, concerning the IG or every other photographic community from my point of view, every person should compete with others only in the creative approach and in the vision, the main sense of the photography, its soul is in the shot not in the equipment.

I’m on IG: @bullfinch