#Latergram: Shoot 1st Post l8r

The concept of posting an instagram image way later than when it was taken is a #latergram. I do this. Like all the time. Everything on my feed has been posted days if not weeks from when it was taken. Contrary to instagram being something that’s supposed to display what’s going on currently in the user’s life, I fail to believe that people are all that interested in what I’m doing at this very second. Nor would anyone probably really want to know. flushes toi  uh.. *washes hands*.

I think that being able to post something when I please gives me better control over what I want to share with the world and gives me the time to think whether this is something that people would actually enjoy or if it serves as something that’s shared for the sake of sharing.

I prefer my images to have a flow, to tell a story and to work well from one to the next so I carefully select which shot I want to post to reflect a certain continuity in my feed and make it coincide with whatever it is that I may be feeling at the time. If there’s anything ‘insta’ about my feed, it’s the captions that usually go with the images.

What this also allows me to do is actually enjoy the time I’m out doing something. I can’t be fully experiencing the moment if I’m constantly on my phone posting throughout the day. I like to fully experience the moment and worry about the images later.

By letting my images ‘marinate’ (something I learned from Garry Winogrand in lesson number 6 of Eric Kim’s article) I create an emotional disconnect with my images and this allows me to go back and look at them more objectively to see whether or not it was actually a good shot or if I just thought it was because of how I was feeling at the time of taking it. But of course it’s good… ‘cause I took it pfff… *not really*.

Obviously all this requires more work than needed. Some people can snap a photo, edit it if needed, apply a filter, write something (or not), hasthtag, and post within minutes if not seconds. I’m sure there’s a joke about finishing quickly but I’ll keep this PG-13 (for now). This is great if you don’t want to spend too much time in front of a screen. I however, obviously like making extra work for myself, but clearly it’s for the purpose of making a quality contribution to the world of the internets.

What I’ve noticed is that the more you post, especially of the same angle/subject matter, the less people start to care. What separates you from another person posting pretty pictures? Frankly I find it funny when feeds start to look exactly like one another. Especially from people in the same city shooting the same stuff but that’s another topic in itself. The underlining message here I guess is quality over quantity. *NBC’s “The More You Know” PSA banner suddenly files by*

I do all this because it’s a hobby for me, an outlet to share my images and to an extent, my words. I’m not being paid to do this so the only deadlines I have are the ones I give myself. It’s better this way (at least for me) and perhaps for you as a viewer who can hopefully appreciate that there’s a bit of thought put into each pixel on the screen. Also might renew faith in humanity that we’re not all consumed by the rules of social media - but who am I kidding, we all are, in a way, sucked into it. Maybe by doing things my way, it serves as a method to stick it to the man. What can I say, I’m a rebel that’s bad to the bone and tomorrow, I’m gonna remove all the ‘do not remove’ tags from my couch cushions… *no I’m not..*

I figured some shots of the CNE (Canadian National Exhibiton - for those not from Toronto) would be a perfect pairing for this post given that it ended two weeks ago - Enjoy!