On a recent trip to Williamsburg, NY, I managed to take 26 Instagrams, bringing me to a grand total of 500 Instagrams since I joined the social media platform in the Spring of 2012. That may sound like a lot or a little, depending on your perspective. It averages out to less than two a day. I’m a pretty picky curator. I only post the results I’m most pleased with, so in reality, I’ve composed far more shots that never made the cut.
I’m sure there are many changes ahead for Instagram. Image archiving and sorting will likely improve with time. Of course there are various third party apps to assist with just that, but I kind of like Instagram’s current method of archiving just the way it is. Users can amass hundreds and hundreds of images over time that are stored very simply by the moment in time when they were created. Whether you use your smart phone to compose an image in real time or you import an existing image and apply an Instagram filter, they are all stored chronologically. It’s like a little time capsule right there in the palm of your hand.
I love photography. I own numerous cameras and I use each of them in different ways. For me, smart phone photography is just fun. Since I travel a great deal for my job, it gives me a way to easily document my experiences using a method of capturing the everyday in a way that is itself very connected to the everyday. I’ve already been to Connecticut since I hit the 500 mark, and soon I’ll be traveling to Chicago, Albany and Minneapolis. Imagine all the Instagrams!
My Instagram account is set to private, but I post some of my favorite shots on my Tumblr account. Check it out here: http://littleardour.tumblr.com/.