I didn’t join the iPhone revolution for years. I’d always gone for the cheap (read “free”) option when it came to picking a handset to go with my phone contract. I’d always ended up with an old school Nokia or Samsung that back in the day had a camera on it that looked more like a drunk painting than a fair reflection on what I was doing at the time. So when all this Instagram thing first happened, it kind of passed me by.
After a while though I started getting a bit jealous. Mostly jealous of other bloggers and tweeters and all that. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s a bloke called Jeff who writes this blog called “Food, Wine, Click” who just takes the piss out of it. By that I mean he is seriously good at taking photos and it just makes you want to weep when you compare your own pathetic efforts against such talent.
Something had to be done. I needed to upgrade the phone to start with, and I needed to push myself to get on Instagram and get good at this shit! By the time the next contract came up for renewal, the iPhone 5s was something daft like £4.99 if you bought it with a certain bundle. Done! Ok so I’ve got a better camera, now what? You know the saying “there’s an app for that”? That was next! A quick Facebook plea to my mates later and Camera+ and SnapSeed were installed…let the messing around begin!
I think every wine blogger/vlogger/tweeter/instagrammer has the big issue of how do you take pictures of glasses or bottles of wine and keep making them interesting? So there’s me these days trying all these different angles, lightings, and backgrounds. Everyone hates going out for dinner with me now. The whole restaurant is turning round with that “what the fuck is he doing?” look on their faces as I’m down on one knee or lying on the floor trying to get the most interesting shot. Look, it’s a bottle of wine, it doesn’t get that interesting, but we’ve got to try eh?
So then to Instagram. As the management of Twitter continue to work out how to “make it pay” and slowly piss off all the old school users, Instagram is becoming the big thing. You’ve got to be on there. So I have to kick myself up the bum to get a post on it every day. Followers are slowly starting to arrive, which is great, but there’s plenty of work to do to get the dizzy heights of the WineWankers or Once Upon A Wine. Maybe I’ll get there some day…
Cheers
