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These “Truth” Behind India Instagram Photos are Terrible.

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In an attempt to start a national discussion around one advertising agency’s bid at boosting tourism to India, Limitless has put together a series of images that supposedly tell the truth behind serene looking colourful Instagram images of the country.

It doesn’t work.

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Despite being lauded by Buzzfeed, Design Taxi & Laughing Squid among others, at Phogotraphy are left unphased at the author’s attempt of juxtaposition. The ‘truth’ being revealed beyond the boundaries of the square crop Instagram frame is more of a lie Continue reading →

Study: Using filters on your photos means more views.

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Did you know that adding filters to your photos can result in more views and comments? Well the clever bods at Yahoo Labs have just released a very interesting study on ‘Why We Filter Our Photos and How It Impacts Engagement’ and having crunched a whole lot of numbers they found that “filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on by consumers of photographs.”

“We analyzed how filters affect a photo’s engagement (consumers’ perspective) using a corpus of 7.6 million Flickr photos. We find two groups of serious and casual photographers among filter users. The serious see filters as correction tools and prefer milder effects. Casual photographers, by contrast, use filters to significantly transform their photos with bolder effects. We also find that filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on by consumers of photographs.”

Wow! When the sheer volume of smartphone images shared online is so massive (apparently Instagram averages 60 million images uploaded a day, and the iPhone is Flickr‘s most popular camera), will a little filtering really help you get noticed amongst all those pictures?

A lack of views can leave you feeling deflated.
A lack of views can leave you feeling deflated.

There are other elements to take into account of course. The number of followers you have and having an image with a lot of views already automatically puts you high up in the social networking charts and makes sure even more people see your images. Plus, a high level of social interactivity online will also result in more views and more comments on your own work but still, that’s quite some quantitative analysis they’ve done there!

The study found two distinct groups amongst the filter-using photographers on Flickr – the serious hobbyist and the casual photographer – and according to their study the serious photographer uses a more delicate touch, preferring to use correction tools and less obvious filters while the casual photographers like a big, bold, image changing effect on their pictures.  Continue reading →

London Metropolitan Police Issue Caution to Editor of the Guardian for Using a Tripod.

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The police in London had nothing better to do yesterday morning than respond to the cries of a “large, sweaty speck” who happened to be passing by Guardian journalist Alan Rusbridger as he was having his photograph taken by David Levene on Hampstead Heath, a public space.

In Rusbridger’s blog on the Guardian he explained how the situation played out:

On the brow of the hill there was a jogger stretched in silhouette, no more than a tiny speck against the trees and blue sky. I took a picture.

The tiny speck turned out to be an unhappy speck. He ran down the hill shouting that I had no right to take pictures and I’d better effing delete them. As he got nearer he became a rather large and shouty speck, sweat beading on his bald head as he bellowed in my face.

We were effing out of order. It was illegal to take effing pictures here and if I didn’t delete the effing picture he’d effing call the police. He was really quite menacing – in the manner, say, of a 90s gangster movie.

I explained I was disinclined to delete the picture I had taken in a public space just because he looked to be on the point of murdering me. This made the speck even crosser.

Continue reading →

Experts That Said Facebook’s Acquisition of Instagram was “Ill-advised” are proved wrong.

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Two and a half years ago the web was abuzz with news that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.com had struck a deal with the owner-founders of Instagram to buy the photo sharing service for a billion dollars made up of $FB stock options and hard cash. On the most part it was considered a very risky move by Facebook, as Instagram wasn’t even turning a profit. Purchasing a completely separate entity rather than innovating themselves is something Facebook has made a name for.

The general sentiment at the time was dampened as not long had passed since Yahoo had completely desecrated the once king of photo sharing sites Flickr by rolling out a complete redesign at the bereft of its users. If one of the major players in social media can do that to Flickr, what will Facebook to to Instagram?

Connor Adams Sheets for The International Business Times summed up how much of the industry felt about the deal at the time:

“overpaying for companies like Instagram won’t help Facebook maintain its dominant market share, as a billion bucks for a fun (and admittedly useful) photo app represents a huge overestimation of how much the company is really worth.”

Oh how wrong we all were. Because today, Facebook announced by virtue of the brokers CitiGroup that their acquisition of the selfie, filtered, food-fest site is now estimated at a very cool $35 billion dollars. The maths involved has had a few commentators a little sceptical, but even if it’s only half that value it is an impressive investment.

Next comes the real test, as you may recall early this year Mark made another photography related (yes, perhaps a little tenuous) acquisition by bringing on board the mobile messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars! Let’s see what Citigroup have to say about that next quarter.

Related:

Wired.com – Instagram’s Buyout: No Bubble to be Seen here

The Telegraph – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Defends $1bn Instagram Purchase