for the past few months i struggled with what i wanted to say on Instagram. did i want to continue making my stream exclusively for cellphone photographs, or did i want to start posting more of my film and DSLR photos? putting up old photos from the Contax T2 and giving them hundreds of tags ultimately felt pointless and hollow, just like all the likes from followback hungry Instaphotogs. perhaps i am in a photography funk, blaming all my inactivity on a platform that is supposed to inspire. but still, my problems with Instagram still lie in its "too perfect" calculated sheen too prevalent in social media - only a hundred times amplified here on Instagram. something about the meticulousness of the content feels cold and mechanical. the photos are nice and all, but i still cannot come to terms as to how most of these Instaphotogs get such perfect lighting all the time!
600 photographs into my photostream, and i feel like i've lost the steam to try and impress myself with all the likes and notifications. the whole point of it is lost, and becomes nothing but hollow gratification. perhaps it's time to focus my creative output elsewhere and leave this medium behind. maybe now is the time to take more photographs and slow down with all the sharing. after all, i imagine a photo one puts up on Instagram gets an average of 2.5 seconds of viewing before the user scrolls down to the next photograph of somebody's flat laid lunch. goodbye, Instagram. i will try not to miss all the photostreams of the cute girls i follow.
