Hello Friends!!

Are you on instagram? I’m sure most of you are!

Actually, I find instagram quite amazing!! After adding your photo, you can also apply some of the preset filters to give it an aged look or other effects to enhance the photo. I’m not sure if it is because of the squared look (the photos will need to be square ready, or cropped into a square) or is it because of the filters and effects, but most shots will look good almost immediately – provided they were well taken or well composed in the first place

Instagram is not exactly new – launched in October 2010, it was (and still is) one of the fastest growing social media platform for photo sharing (and now with video sharing as well – short videos up to 15 seconds) with 100 million active users reported in April 2012. Recently, they have also launched a new Direct messaging feature where you can send photos, videos and messages directly (and privately) with your friends!

Although they were acquired by Facebook in April 2012 (for approximately US$1 Billion!!!), instagram is not exactly like FaceBook – especially where we seldom see much “haters” in comments and followings (although there were still occasional blacksheeps here and there) – but it is also similar to FaceBook and most other Social Media platforms (ie. Google Plus), where you can like a photo (or video), leave comments, and follow each other to get updates on your feeds; I only wish we could have threaded replies to comments and the ability to give a like to appreciate certain comments as well – you can reply to somebody by including (tagging) their instagram ids in your comment, but it would get messy and you might miss out on certain replies if there are a lot of comments in the feed.

I have an account for this blogsite already, but recently I am more active on my own personal account (@charlesleekk) – started it for my trip to Korea about two months ago (December 2013).

Do check out my gallery and leave me some comments on my photos and give me some likes if they are worthy of your likes!

Occasionally, I would create some “panoramic shots” (examples in the image above) and share them. They would show up better if you look at the gallery as a whole. One can also create such features in groups of 6, 9, 12 (and even more) These were created in groups of 3s because at our instagram gallery on mobile, the photos are displayed in 3 columns – hopefully THEY will not change this format, or make it 4 (or 5) in a column! – this would also not turn out nice if you were to be browsing the galleries from your desktop computers..

The only issue with creating such features is, every time I want to share new individual photos, I will need to upload them in group of 3s too, else the gallery will be ruined – if you are already following my instagram account, this is the main reason why I usually upload 3 photos at one go (sorry hor, if you find that this is too much – the max I’ll go is 3 at a time, I’ll not flood your feed with like 30 at one go – there are people who actually send out like 10 or more shots at a go, flooding my feed!!)

A Little Tip To Share - BookMarking

Some time down the road, one would have loads of images in their gallery, and it might be difficult to find certain photos.

There is no bookmark function in instagram, so one way to bookmark them yourself, is to give it a unique hashtag, ie. for my panorama images, I use the hashtag #panofeaturegallery so that I can refer to them quickly – Hashtags are public and “free for all”, so we cannot trademark it or own it per se, so someone else might also tag their photos with your hashtag – I do hope nobody will ruin this panofeature gallery – you are welcome to use the same hashtag too if you have such triple panoramic featured shots to share!

Go Social With Instagram

There are also groups and communities to join where you can share photos of common interests, or join in their daily or weekly themed challenges, or even attend the local instameets. You should check out some of these groups to increase your social circle and also to gain some tips from the experts!

Singapore Instagram Community @instaSG

If you are in Singapore, you can check out this wonderful community @instaSG

They host a weekly themed challenge (#instasgmonday9pm) every Monday night at around 9pm (2100hrs GMT+8) where a unique hashtag will be created for the community to share their shots, and then the 3 of the best shots would be featured on their feed – usually the next day.

image courtesy of @instaSG

There are also occasional special events such as the recent one where the winners will win invites with media passes to Singapore’s Chingay Parade (#instasgChingay) and also with equipment courtesy of Nikon Singapore (#NikonSingapore)

image courtesy of @instaSG

They also hold monthly instawalks where the community will meet up at local places of interest, such as the recent one on 25th January 2014 at the Tiong Bahru Heritage Trail – and for that day there was also a contest for the participants to share their shots with the special hashtag (#ThatTiongBahruVibe) and the winner won a little surprise (a fisheye lens for mobile phone)!!

An “IGer” instagrammer will also be featured monthly – and occasionally a new instaSG Found member too!

image courtesy of @instaSG

(I was honoured to be featured as the instaSG Found member last month!!)

You can also check out their blog posts at instasg.tumblr.com for their features and activities posts.

#JJ Community with @joshjohnson

For our international friends, you can check out the #JJ community, instagram’s first and most active (and largest) community.

Hosted by Josh Johnson (@joshjohnson) – a Atlanta based photographer with over 15 years of experience and Kevin Kuster (@kevinkuster) – former Playboy Senior Photo Editor, every day at about 9am New York Time, a theme and a new hashtag would be mentioned, and then the community would share their photos with the special tag of the day.

There is also a unique traditional, the “1 2 3” – for every 1 shot you post, you comment on 2 from the day’s feed, and like 3 – this encourages participation and interactions among the community, and this also corresponds to their motto, “Create To Connect“.

With the help of a team of @jj_editors, they will go through the numerous daily submissions (over 7000 tagged photos every day!), and then the team would recommend the ones that they think are worthy of mention.

At the end of the day, Josh would pick out 5 (or 10) of his favourite submissions and share it to the whole community on his feed.

Occasionally, Josh would also share his tips (instatips) about anything related to getting a good and well composed shot, or a photography related mobile app!

image courtesy of @joshjohnson

Check out the upcoming 5 day #JJ Community Photography Workshop (with a two day photo adventure into the Costa Rica Tropica Forest) organised together with The Trip Tribe, on the 14th to 18th May 2014, to be held at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa. Find out more about this event at http://bit.ly/jjcostarica or the trip details here http://sglife.in/jjcostaricatrip

image courtesy of @joshjohnson

There is also an ongoing photo editing challenge (#jj_mobilemaster_challenge), where the community are tasked to edit together the images provided for the theme
“Vintage Old School Cameras Meets New School”.

Four winning images selected will represent the #jj community at this year’s MacWorld/iWorld conference – where Kevin is going to be one of the guest speaker – to be held from 27th to 29th March 2014 at San Francisco, CA. The winning image and the creator will also be featured in the “2014 Mobile Masters Contest ebook”, plus a FREE ticket (about US$300 worth) to attend the MacWorld/iWorld workshop and conference!! – however, do note that your air-ticket is not included 🙂

You can submit up to 5 images for the entry (one of my entry is the image used at the top of this blog post, where I created the instagram image with a montage of all the photos provided for this contest)

Dateline for the submission is 8th March 2014. For more information you can check out Macworldiworld.com

Follow @instagram

And of course, you should also follow @instagram where they would occasionally feature instagrammers and also share latest news and happenings at instagram. You can also participate in their Weekly Hashtag Projects, where the selected instragrammers will be featured as well.

Usually there are no physical prizes when your images gets selected or when you are featured by the instagram communities – but the honour to be the feature instagrammer of the day / week / month is like an achievement and acknowledgement of your wonderful work! For me, this would inspire me to take more shots and also give a thought to framing and composing the shots for a chance to be featured!!

I’m still new to this and still learning the tips and tricks from the experts – and I find instagram somewhat adictive too!!

What about you? Are you an avid instagrammer or instagram addict too? Share your wonderful creations with me and do leave me a comment or share your tips on how to get that wonderful featured shot!!

See you in instagram!!