Transition1

Thesis:

With over 300 million active users, Instagram is a place where amateur photographers can practice the art of photography in a non-jugdemental environment helping them to prosper into better photographers.

Intro:

With the increasing popularity of social media, posting pictures has become a daily ritual for some people. Any popular social media today has some feature where you can upload pictures, but there is only a few which ONLY have features to post pictures. The most popular one of these few is called Instagram.

Transition1:

Instagram is a diverse community with many different people posting things from dogs to selfies at the beach but anyone can become a part of this community with one phone application.

Topic Sentence 1: How to use Instagram

Instagram can be downloaded from any of the application stores on your phone—App Store for iPod users and Google Play for Android users. After you downloaded it to your phone all you have to do is go through basic account creation process and you can start posting pictures. Your Instagram profile can be set so that only the people you allow to follow you—“followers”—see your pictures or you can make it so anyone can see your pictures. This is where some people split up on the uses of Instagram. On one side you have people who want to share their pictures to the world to get their name known for the pictures they take and on the other side you have people who only want their group of friends to see their posts.

The process of uploading a picture is rather simple where you choose a picture, select a filter, edit your picture, write a caption, and share it. One of the main distinctive features of Instagram is the square picture where it makes the picture have an old fashioned Polaroid style frame. With the most recent smart phones they have adapted to this square photo and have created an option to take your pictures in the square so when you uploaded to Instagram it would fit perfectly.

When writing captions users can use “hashtags” or # signs to place that picture in a category. For example if you used #ootd which is an acronym for outfit of the day, that picture will be placed in that category and when people search up #ootd your picture will be in there. This is a way where people who want to share their pictures can have it searched up from around the world. In this way there are many hashtags that people use and once a lot of people take notice to your pictures and you start to gain more and more followers, you become “insta-famous” which just means you are a popular Instagramer.

There are different scales of “insta-famous”. One scale could be around the people you know or your group of friends they have thousands of followers other than the people they know. Another scale is the actual famous people who are famous in real life too with millions of followers. Then there are people who no one knew about until Instagram and they are now the “top” instagramers on Instagram with followers amounting to the same or even more than the actual celebrities of our world.

Transition 2:

The daily lives of these “top” instagramers are a little different and almost religious in a sence of what they do.
Topic Sentence 2: The daily routine of an Instagramer

Someone who is an avid user of Instagram and post daily photos go through their daily lives with a little different duty in mind. The duty to bring their followers a daily dose of what that user has to offer. This may be different for what types of pictures you post, such as fashion, food, scenery, blog based, etc. but many of the followers expect something from that person they are following or else they might “unfollow” them. This is a term not many people on Instagram like to hear and it is almost offensive in a sense they are telling you, “You’re not what I’m into”. It kind of makes you feel like you are getting rejected even though they started to follow you first. For people who actually put an effort into the pictures they post this is a big deal, that’s why in their everyday life they have to find a time to take that nice shot, edit it, and post it.

(Interview with Keenan)

(Buzz-Feed Interview of famous Instagram user)

Transition 3:

While some may think anyone can post pictures on Instagram, it actually takes a lot of time and dedication to capture that right shot and make it look astonishing for the viewers.

Topic Sentence 3: How photographers prosper through Instagram

Because of the increasing popularity of Instagram many companies own Instagram accounts and post pictures for advertisement and to get in with the social trend. Amongst these companies, local companies or small up and coming brands like to sponsor avid Instagramers. There are local small time companies that like to use submissions from other Instagramers and share those pictures with their followers allowing that sponsored photographer gain more notoriety.

User accounts such as, venturehawaii, hawaiiunchained, hvnapparel, redlabelclothing, and many more accounts like to advertise by having others take pictures for them and once they take a liking to a certain persons pictures they can sponsor them officially. This will help increase your fame and followers on Instagram because many people like to follow these local Hawaii based Instagram accounts. Through these users who share your pictures you will slowly start to gain notoriety and as you get more and more into photography you will know what your audience wants and you will sharpen your skills of photography and or editing to produce a satisfying piece.
Conclusion:

Because of the user friendly interface throughout Instagram, many users are free to express themselves and amateur photographers are able to prosper throughout the world of photography.