Photography is and has been a popular pursuit for many years. With programs like Adobe Photoshop, photo editing has reached a high level, yet there are still revelations to be made in the photo world. “Instagram” is a new free application for iPhones and other application-capable devices that have recently become popular.
Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Users can snap a photo with an iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, and then upload the photo to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. Instagram is the ideal photo-sharing app for people looking for the next retro-cool app. It’s like Facebook, except just with pictures.
Instant-film cameras are long gone, but their obsolescence has triggered a longing in those who remember them. Instagram not only lets you make your photos look as if they were taken with a 1970s Polaroid, but lets you share them with friends through your social networks.
This new app has easy functionality and an active community, which has contributed many great photos uploaded to Instagram. Even if you don’t plan on posting anything, Instagram is worth downloading just for browsing through users’ creations.
It can also be a great way for beginner photographers to share their art out for viewers to. If users like a person’s art, it will definitely become popular within the Instagram community.
Signing up for Instagram is a quick process. All you have to do is enter an email address, a username and password, and you’re ready to go.
When uploading photos to Instagram, users can “like” or comment on the photo by using the iPhone app. While this defeats the purpose of the application’s social networking function, you can also make photos private. Unfortunately, there’s no way to toggle this option selectively, which means all your pictures can only be private or public.
Some complications of this application are that Android or Windows users are not admitted, some photos are too small to upload, effects can be gimmicky (especially to professional photographers), and it has a smaller audience than Flickr and Tumblr, not to mention big social networking sites like Facebook.
However, some positives are that it’s an addictive way to browse others’ photos and it’s easy to jump among users who “liked” or “friended” makers of photos that interest you. Instagram combines a handful of photo effects with a photo-centric social networking element.
Don’t count on it overtaking Flickr any day soon, but much like the Color iPhone app, it’s likely to be superseded by the next iPhone photo app, which will more than likely be coming to the world of technology very soon.
Opinions expressed in editorial and opinion articles are the views of individual NIC students. These views do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Sentinel, North Idaho College, or any other organizations or groups there-in. North Idaho College is not responsible for the accuracy of statements or opinions shared.
