Instagram - A creative resource

Yesterday, I blogged about participating in monthly Instagram photo posts to get my "creative" on...  You can read that post here.  

Do you know what Instagram is?  No?  If not, you are definitely missing out!  It's another form of social media that allows you to connect with people through the sharing of photos.  From what I can tell, Instagram is only used from your smart phone.  In other words, I've linked the Instagram website in the above link, but the URL is just a website that gives you information on Instagram.  You cannot really use the app at this site.  You need to download it on your smart phone either in your AppStore (for iPhones) or your Google Play store (for Androids).  

I, like most people, use Instagram as a way to share a portion of my life via pictures AND as a way to challenge me creatively.  Here's how it challenges me.  When I see pictures that have special effects, or writing, or cool frames, I immediately investigate to see which app the photo's originator used to create such a cool photo!  On the bus commuting home yesterday, I performed the following edits to the below photo:

The above photo is a picture my baby sister, Fran.  I just love this photo of her.  TipJunkie's Day 3 photo challenge was to photo something you "adore".  I immediately thought of my baby sister.  She can make me almost wet-my-pants every time we are together!!  I just think she is a "hoot" and I "adore" her.  So I took this picture and cropped it closer to show off her pretty smile.  The app I used to crop the photo is called Picture Magic.  Picture Magic also has a "frame" option that allowed me to add the pretty "frosted" bokeh that you see on the sides of the photo.  I wanted to blur out the people in the background so you could focus on my pretty sister.  

My next step in the above photo was to add some bokeh and I knew that I wanted to use hearts to go with the theme of "adore".  The app that I used is called Bokehful.  It easily allowed me to pick the type of bokeh I wanted (hearts) and then I just moved my finger over the screen on my smart phone to "place" the hearts.  Once I saved the photo, I was able to move onto the next app. 

The last step that I used in the above photo was to add text.  I have different apps that I'm testing to determine which one I like best when it comes to adding text.  The one I used for this picture is called Phonto.  It makes adding text extremely easy.  You can resize the text, color the text, move the text, and change the type of font.  In order to use two different fonts on this photo, I inserted two different text boxes.  Once I saved the photo, I was able to upload it to Instagram.  

Here is the finished product from Instagram.  I added the black frame around the photo through Instagram.  Most of the time, I just scroll through each template to see if I like the results of adding the template because you get an instant view of what your photo will look like.  I just "experiment" to find the view I like! 


If you want to follow me on Instagram, I'm @tracymboyle.  See you there!