Hot in the footsteps of the head of Instagram upload On the future of social media services are some opinions on what this means for photographers.
Coming to you from photographer and YouTuber Jonny Keeley, he offers some thoughts on Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s comments about what it means to experiment with (very) vertical 9:16 photos . Mosseri notes that Instagram is really going to focus on video and messaging in the future, and since videos typically have a 16:9 ratio when horizontally and 9:16 when vertically, this means Instagram becomes more It’s more like TikTok and uses a grid for the reels instead of the standard square grid it’s been using forever.
While that vertically oriented grid might work for people shooting videos vertically, it might not be so great for photographers who have cameras that shoot in the 2:3 aspect ratio. That’s even worse for Micro Four Thirds shooters whose cameras typically rotate in 3:4 when shooting vertically. It means some extreme cropping, which essentially results in a loss of resolution and limited composition if those photos work in a square grid, with the square cropping off the top and bottom of the photo. and maybe interesting subject matter in those parts of the photo.
One option is to set your camera’s aspect ratio to 16:9 to force your brain to think that way, but a lot of work requires photographers to force themselves to conform to the way photographers think. filmmakers when the app was originally designed for photography. It looks like Instagram is turning away from the photographers who built the platform in pursuit of TikTok-like engagement through video. It also doesn’t use your camera’s full sensor, which takes away the purpose of paying for that camera and resolution in a few ways.
Mosseri points out that the future is mobile-first, which neither Keeley nor I agree. While it’s great to see Instagram on my phone, I prefer my 27-inch screen to do anything and everything whenever I can. Why limit yourself to a tiny phone screen?
Instagram currently can’t fully display 2:3 vertical photos without cropping, so 9:16 is a big jump. Looks like the Instagram feed is about to get pretty messy.
What do you think of this possible change to Instagram? Love it? Hate it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
