Whenever you take pictures using your android phone or iPhone cameras, you can make your shots look better and even “artsy” looking by having them go through an app called Instagram.
This is a template tech process currently in vogue among smartphone cam users. Users who love to take such pics and use the app usually post their Instagram processed photos on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, StumbleUpon or Flickr.
There are many other such sites on the web for sure and you can bet that a whole lot of Instagramization happens all the time.
Smartphone cam photography is the offshoot of this mobile device feature. The mania has spread all over the world helped along by social media’s overwhelming capability to deliver photographic info at a rapid viral rate.
You may find out about how much this kind of photography has captured the attention of professional photographers. Google it up and be surprised. It has become a genre by itself with hundreds of publications devoted to the topic.
Not a lot of such photography, however, involves the Instagram app in their development.
Nevertheless, it still makes significant the fact that with the Instagramization of photography, the lines blur further between what is photography and what isn’t.
Dummy level
Instagram photography, if it can be called as such, exposes the tendency for high-tech to democratize talent and skill among users and the genuine practitioners of photography. There may be no real evidence to emphasize this at present.
By employing such technological template process on visual images, however, it becomes imbued with the ingredient of genuine talent and skill — brought down to the “dummy” level. There are a number of reasons why this belief may be justified like the following:
No genuine artistic skill required:
- Anyone can take pictures using their smartphone cams and process them using Instagram filters and presto! Artsy looking pics for social media posting!
- The basic elements of photography and post-process are taken out of the equation. Visual control of the subject is arbitrary and oftentimes non-existent.
- Most smartphone photography is made up of spur-of-the-moment snapshots by amateurs more than those done by professional photographers experimenting with new tech.
No real tech savvy required:
- For those who tackle photography exclusively from the technical sense via gear and tech gadgets and their efficient operation, smartphone cams do not really pass off as the perfect technology to do so.
- It has limited capabilities as an image capture tool.
Creativity by multiple choice:
- You choose what filters to use and that’s it. It’s the triumph of style over substance. No creative thinking required. No application of basic rules and elements required.
- No “darkroom” techniques and Photoshop or Lightbox proficiency required, likewise.
Encourages tolerance of the manufactured image:
- This is the automatic offshoot of anything coming out from template tech. Everything will look nice but everything will look the same in the long run.
No more ugly pics
What Instagram photography offers are benefits you will not find in practical or professional photography with an instantaneous level of delivery. First of all, incidences of ugly pictures will become less and less or totally non-existent.
The appreciation level of users can only increase. The same is true with the interactive entertainment value it will be providing users with that will tend to increase as use becomes more pervasive.
Instagram photography has yet to prove itself against the test of time. By any analysis using the premise of mobile device technology, it is likely to be prone to quick irrelevance once new improvements in tech, phone system and app development take place.
So let’s all just play it cool and see what happens next.
