In a highly anticipated move to allow you to advertise, Instagram goes live with Landscape pictures as of well today!
Weeks ago, the Facebook owned picture posting network decided to do away with the limited advertising potential via direct dealings and open the flood gates for just about anyone to advertise. Unfortunately at this stage, you can only do so using selected Instagram partners to do this. More on this on a later date.
Landscape isn’t new. Some apps on both Playstore and Appstore allowed you to crop photos which are in landscape to fit Instagram’s square frame. What you lose however is the extra spaces between the picture and the square frame and that wasn’t ideal. Even by all accounts, having the photos enlarged, the old square frame of 640 pixels square wasn’t going to yield a better picture up close. This was probably why they decided to ditch the lower resolution for mid resolution pictures recently.
Now that ads will appear on your home feed, Instagram feels that you should be able to dump the Square format pictures and post in landscape as well.
When Instagram was first launched on iOS, it was a homage of sorts to the Polaroid SX-70’s square format pictures that won the hearts of consumers in the 70s. Dr, Edwin Land, inventor of the polarising lens and instant picture camera thought that it would be easier for people to compose pictures in a square format instead of a landscape format. He had, at that time, other cameras that could capture pictures in landscape using a peel away instant film. So to discourage people from throwing away the peels, he decided to redesign the system by making the camera smaller which produced the square format pictures without the peel away layer.
Instagram experienced a mutiny of sorts during the last revision, that was to introduce an Android app. Stalwarts barked and left the network as they had perceived Instagram was diluting its user base to include unworthy Android users.
This elitist exodus was welcomed into other picture sharing communities that eventually failed. Needless to say Instagram won its day.
How Landscape Changes your Post
It does change the way you create a picture but that doesn’t mean it will kill your audience. Instagram’s last big change was from its 640 pixel square to a 1000 pixel square. It didn’t impact people much since it is after all still a square picture. What it gave was a better resolution picture and this incremental change in picture resolution paved the way for landscape pictures. This however does not in any way give you a bigger picture in Landscape mode. There is no way to pinch and zoom to admire the details in Instagram so you would do well to avoid having tiny details in your landscape pictures which have been seen up close to be admired.
The change to landscape mode for picture taking will be off putting at first because of how you need to hold the camera. By tipping the camera on its side, you need to have a steady hold on your camera while using your thumb to hit the shutter button. Whereas in portrait mode, you can hold the device as you would normally do capture a square picture.
For smartphone photographers who already capture using landscape mode, this isn’t going to be a big deal.
For content creators who wish to stamp their mark on their photos, you could of course capture landscape photos and within it, put your own social message.
Landscape images are ideal for such scribblings as there is sufficient space to add your two cents worth to the image content. Done artistically, it has its merits. You can still post in square format if you so wish but landscape is far more interesting for content developers like myself.
At the present moment, there is no hidden algorithm to hide post from your friends or people you follow. This could be adjust in view of the potential of those adverts I was talking about earlier. If you follow a lot of people, there will be a lot of post on your timeline. Once this happens, there would be a deluge…a problem that is being observed in G+. Instagram will have to find its own way around this.
Techmystique 