There’s a new social networking tool on the horizon. And when I say new, it has actually been around for 10 months, but of course just hasn’t yet gone “mainstream”. It’s Instagram – and it’s growing rapidly, with over four million users worldwide. To be that well used there must be something about it, and I tend to think there is: because Instagram has inspired my own search for creativity.
Late last year, I started thinking about creativity. I think I’m creative but I’m not so sure how to harness that creativity, I wrote at the time. And while I haven’t yet moved on the idea raised in that post of starting a creative cluster (I want to soon!) I have been spending alot of this year thinking about what creativity is. How to develop it, how to recognise it, and how I can use it to have fun and to do things that bring value to my job, my life, and other people’s lives.
Instagram has been a major part of that for me this year. I’m not the best photographer, but occasionally I hit a gem – usually only when I’m not expecting to or trying to. And throughout this year, as I’ve posted the photos I’ve taken on-the-go, I’ve been getting instant feedback (comments and the good ol’ ‘likes’) from people I know, people I haven’t yet met, or people I have now met because of Instagram!
Instagram works by taking your mobile shots, transforming them with pre-set filters, and posting them to the Instagram ‘feed’. Sounds pretty standard and perhaps uncreative, but that’s just the start. Because Instagram is native to the iPhone, it’s ended up spawning significant usage of other iPhone apps that – if you spend a bit of time with them – can both help you take great photos (eg. by helping frame up) or help you make them look even better after taking them. Tilt-shifting became quite popular, so in February this year a tilt-shift option was added natively into Instagram to give the iphotographer more control over their depth of field (you can see this above left).
Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek magazine describes Instagram’s process as “add[ing] visual effects that give images the classic look of photographs captured on traditional film and developed with chemicals”. Some feel that this simply makes Instagram an art devaluer. And some, like camera-maker Olympus, are threatened by the growing trend that Instagram is a part of!
For me, Instagram not only inspires my creativity by bringing editing tools closer than the large-learning-curve of Photoshop-like tools, but it also adds ‘social’ to the experience (which is obviously why it is doing so well). I mentioned that Instagram has amassed over 4 million users in less than a year since launch. And communities of these users are springing up across the world. Branca (pictured right) took on the leadership mantle for Instagramers Melbourne – which is exactly what it sounds like: a group of keen Instagram users in Melbourne.
Finding Instagram through a friend in January this year, it didn’t take long for Branca to warm to the network and to meet users right around the world – some of who were already running local ‘Instagramers’ groups. And no less than a day later, the life-long Melburnian and e-marketer by trade had launched ‘Instagramers Melbourne’.
The group (and other similar groups around the world) does three main things in the local Instagram community: curates a feed of regular A-class snapshots of life as taken by fellow Melburnians; runs contests around a common theme that usually brings out elements of individual Instagramer’s lives; and facilitates monthly meetups – between a group that is fast becoming good friends. “It’s the people, they are passionate, talented and really down to earth,” Branca tells me. “The support and encouragement of each other shows real mateship.”
The next Instagramers Melbourne meetup is this Saturday, 20th August, meeting at the National Gallery of Victoria and photo-walking to South Melbourne. No pre-requisites for coming – turn up if you’re interested!
See also:
- The photos along the top strip of this blog’s home page – they’re all automatically taken from the latest on my Instagram feed!
- Instagramers Melbourne on Twitter
- Instagramers Melbourne on Facebook
- copygr.am – allows you to view Instagram photos even if you’re not on the network
Photo credits: Photo of Branca taken by Michael Morley on an Instawalk. All other photos are my own.
Awesome Tim!!! I’ll see you on Sat!