What is it and why should I care: Instagram

I have a big digital camera but it’s not convenient to bring with me everywhere I go. For a while I considered carrying around a small point and shoot for the unexpected fun moments but having an iPhone in my pocket meant I essentially did have that. Sweet!

In the world of social media, the fun comes from sharing. I have hundreds of photos on my phone. Sometimes I chose to email them to services that could automatically put them on twitter for me, but most of the time I didn’t.

Enter Instagram.

It is a fun and easy to use iPhone app (unfortunately only iPhone at the moment with no plans to launch android or blackberry options any time soon) that:

- takes photos
- allows you to apply fun filters to them
- with a simple click share to twitter, facebook or flickr
- have a friends feed right within the application

Instagram Filters

What instagram has done is offer 16 filters you can apply to your photos.  They can take a photo that might not have been that interesting and make it a lot more fun.

You can also zoom in and crop your photo.

Instagram tutorial/review Original photo of Quinn at the cottage

Instagram tutorial/review Zoom in and crop

 

Then play with the filters!

instagram tutorial/reviewinstagram tutorial/reviewinstagram tutorial/review

Share


You can hook your account up to your Facebook, Twitter and and Flickr and have them automatically update to those sites (you select where each individual photo is sent, it isn’t automatic). You can also choose to make your photos private and just keep them for yourself - they don’t have to have a social media component.

instagram tutorial/review

You can also follow friends right on Instagram and like and comment on friend’s photos right there.

You can also see generally popular photos on the whole of Instagram.




And there’s a news feed



It’s a really fun app and I now take all of my photos with my phone using it.  If you use it too - look for me and add me, I’m glidinglara.

Happy snapping!