
May 19th, 2013 – Fuji X-E1, 5sec, ƒ1.4.
Hi there, and welcome to my blog!
I’m Simon Albrecht, a Software Engineer from Zurich.
This blog is basically about me, things I like, things I see and things I do.

May 19th, 2013 – Fuji X-E1, 5sec, ƒ1.4.

April 13th, 2013 – Fuji X-E1, 1/550, ƒ1.8.

This weekend, I went out with a friend to take some photos and to test out my new Fujifilm X-E1 with the 35mm ƒ1.4 lens.
Even though the weather was miserable and not very inspiring, I’m still quite satisfied with the results and I’m sure there will be many more opportunities to show off what the X-E1 can do.

Instagram’s already got more than 100 Million users and is still becoming more and more popular every day. So, I thought it would be a good idea to write up a small, 5-step etiquette to make Instagram a more enjoyable and interesting experience for everyone.
Tags are great — if used correctly. Wikipedia defines a tag as follows:
In information systems, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching.
Tags should be exclusively used to give more context to what you see in the picture. Naturally, tags should only be nouns, verbs or adjectives in order for them to stay relevant.
Also, you should limit yourself to 5–10 tags, with each tag separated by a space. There is nothing more frustrating than having to “scroll” just to see the comments nor is it fun tapping on the wrong tag because all the tags are joined together.
Description: The photo shows a house and a beautiful garden with sun flowers.
#summerhouse #garden #gardening #beautiful #sunflowers
Good: The tags are relevant to what you see in the photo and give more context. For example, more context is given by the #summerhouse because now the person who sees the photo knows that this is your summer house.
Description: The photo shows the Eiffel Tower with two people posing in front of it.
vacation#with#best#friend#I#am#so#happy#to#be#here
#instagood#igers#instagramers#igdaily#igersoftheday#instamood…
Bad: First of all, these tags only give more context in the sense that you’re on vacation with your best friend and that you’re happy to be there. This isn’t too bad, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement:
Just for comparison, here’s how I would’ve tagged this photo:
#vacation #bestfriend #happy #eiffeltower #paris
Nobody likes spammers. So just keep all your nonsense and irrelevant comments to yourself. The celebrity whose’s photo you’ve commented doesn’t care about you anyway. The fact that you just commented “OMG I’m you’re biggest fan, I love you so much <333 pleas follow me” (the typos are intentional) doesn’t change the celebrity’s interest in you either.
Don’t pre-crop your photos to some weird format.
Instagram photos are supposed to be square and the built-in photo cropper is there for a reason.

If you don’t want to use Instagram’s built-in filters, editing your photos with other photo editing applications before posting them is absolutely okay. Just don’t overdo it.
Only post photos to Instagram (whether it is a photo from your smartphone’s camera or your DSLR, is a whole other topic). Ultimately Instagram’s a photo and not a screen shot community. This also reduces annoying “shout-out for shout-out” posts.
This one should be obvious. Take your own photos and don’t steal photos from other people or just take one from Google. It’s a matter of respect and ensures that you don’t infringe on anyones copyright.
I hope this article can act as a guideline or a reference for (new) Instagram users. Only together we can make Instagram a more pleasant and enjoyable experience and other users will thank you for following this etiquette. Thank you!
P.S. I’m “s_albrecht” on Instagram.
This is a long exposure shot of the Matterhorn at night.
Ever since I’ve started getting into photography, I’ve used Aperture 3 to edit and manage my photos. This is the first photo I edited in Lightroom 4 and I must say I’m very happy how the photo turned out.
P.S. This photo is available for purchase as a canvas print (20x40 inches) or as a download for personal use.
I’m a 90s kid and the first browser I’ve ever used was Internet Explorer.
Although I’m not using Internet Explorer anymore, this ad still makes me feel nostalgic.