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.

1. Use (hash) tags appropriately

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.

Example 1

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.

Example 2

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:

1. Don’t just tag a whole sentence — I mean who searches on Instagram for the tags #with, #am or #so. It just doesn’t make sense to search for these tags because a) they don’t give you more pictures of the same category and b) they don’t say anything about the picture at all.
2. Use spaces — it’s as simple as that. I had to manually insert a break between the tags because otherwise it would’ve messed up my website’s layout (this also happens on Instagram’s web version). By separating your tags with spaces, you a) make it more legible and b) make it easier to tap on a tag.
3. Don’t use tags like #instagramers, #igers because well — I see this photo on Instagram, so I guess you also must be an Instagram user? What a coincidence… Also, when you use those kind of tags, you’ll get a reasonably big amount of spammy comments and followers. It’s way easier to just cut those out than having to deal with all the spam, isn’t it?

Just for comparison, here’s how I would’ve tagged this photo:

#vacation #bestfriend #happy #eiffeltower #paris

2. Don’t spam in the comments

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.

3. Make use of the built-in crop functionality

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.

4. Post photos, not screen shots

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.

5. Take your own photos

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.

Conclusion

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.