Instagram Exposed

I love Instagram. Don’t get me wrong. I love it for the social aspects of sharing photos and telling story through stunning visual imagery1.  But more often than not people just don’t seem to get it. They take a picture and then run it through unnecessary filters that  detract from a photo rather than enhance it2. And don’t even get me started on people that feel the need to blur things out3.

Instagram starts by lowering the resolution on the photo, dropping the quality right as you begin. Then as you filter, blur, and otherwise manipulate the photo you’re destroying it just a bit more each time.  So this morning I thought I would do a little experiment. I took a quick picture of my breakfast.  I think it looks pretty delicious:

 

 

Mmmm…. bacon4.  But I digress.  That’s just a quick cell phone shot. I didn’t even really try, but I think it looks pretty good.

Even the no filter version of this picture on Instagram doesn’t look as appetizing:

 

And from there I just kept layering on photos5.  Follow below to see the transformation of my breakfast from delish to giant blob6.

  1. OK, sometimes stunning visual imagery. It is out there, you have to follow the right people []
  2. If you follow me on Instragram @RealMikeT, you’ll find that almost everything I upload is nofilter []
  3. Seriously! It’s ridiculous. If things are in the same depth of field but one is blurry and the other is not it looks ridiculous. Enhance the photos, don’t ruin them! []
  4. I realized this morning that people who follow me on Twitter have seen a lot more pictures of my bacon than they have of me. They probably appreciate that. []
  5. I also discovered there’s an Instagram jail for someone who keeps trying to upload photos. I’m currently in it. This post was meant to just be a series of Instagram photos, now it’s here instead. []
  6. Obviously this abuse is on purpose. It’s the first filter with each subsequent filter layered on top. But I think you get the point. []