How Instagram has reinvigorated my photography

The main reason why most blogs die off is the lack of an audience. By that count, it's a wonder I've kept this blog going for so long... (albeit with rather infrequent updates)

Fortunately, I love photography enough to keep going!

Of course, even the deepest well will run dry some day, so I recently sought to find better ways of sharing my photography. I first tried porting this entire blog over to Tumblr because it has social network functionality built-in, and then discovered to my disappointment its lack of SEO. This blog completely trumps it, and I suspect Google's ownership of Blogger has to do with it too.

I considered making better use of Flickr, where I already have an account, but even with the recent upgraded interface and 1TB of storage, I feel reluctant to put too much energy into a platform that doesn't seem to be drawing in new users. It didn't help that their app isn't available in my region for my iPod Touch 5, my main media sharing and consumption device. (I use a Blackberry Z10 as my main communications device)

Then came Instagram. I was actually asked by my wife to set up an account so I can follow and "like" her photos on the service. I dutifully did so and ignored the platform for a while, until the start of July.

I can't remember why I started taking an interest in the first place, but since then I've been a very active member of the community. Initially, I didn't have any specific goal for the platform. I thought of it as an extension of my current photo sharing on Facebook, Blogger and Tumblr.

Actually, this isn't my first posting on Instagram. The real original has been cleared out because it was a random shot that doesn't quite merit the real estate!

But after I started exploring the platform further, I started to see its potential as my main platform for sharing photos. Firstly, it doesn't require me to write much. While I do enjoy writing, it is time-consuming and takes time away from the main purpose of my blog -- photography. Secondly, there is an active community on the platform who are engaged and always exploring new content. Thirdly, you do get a lot of feedback in the form of 'likes' and comments, though people are unlikely to give any criticism.

First try at Photo-stitching

I have read about how it is possible to create ultra-high resolution images by stitching many images together previously, but I didn’t try it out because I didn’t have Photoshop or other similar imaging software. (My main imaging tool has been Nikon’s Capture NX 2.

Recently, I installed a demo version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, which comes with Adobe’s Photomerge tool, an automated photo-stitching function. You may watch a tutorial video by Adobe here, but all you really need is a bit of common sense.

PANORAMAS WITH A 90MM LENS? No problem! With Adobe’s excellent Photomerge, you can create 60-megapixel panoramic images like this quite easily!

So I found myself at Kumamoto Castle in Japan’s Kyushu island today, and found the perfect vantage point to take a wide-angle shot of the main castle building. The problem is, with my current Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera, I didn’t have a lens that was of the right focal length to get the perfect framing – the 18mm f2 (28mm equivalent on 35mm film) is too wide, and 60mm f2.4 (90mm equivalent) is too long.