Instagram is Great; Instagram is Terrible

What is the value of Instagram? Is there a way to talk about the pros and cons without hyperbolic “the TRUTH behind Instagram,” or “Exploding Instagram MYTHS?”

Well, we can certainly talk about it in a reasoned way, and I spent more than 20 minutes thinking through and showing how this social media platform can make you a better photographer - and maybe a happier, better person too (no, it wasn’t sponsored by Instagram - though the video WAS sponsored by Squarespace).

But at that same time that I was writing and recording this video, a judge dismissed a photographer’s copyright lawsuit against Instagram for using her photograph without permission.

I’ll have more to say about this in the coming days.

On a Brighter Note: Our Photo Competition Winners

The same day we released our Instagram video, we also announced the winners of “Make Lemonade from Lemons” photo competition. We received 350 entries from 40 countries across six continents. The finalists were extraordinary, the winners absolutely the cream of that crop. In fact, the entire field was rich.

The People’s Choice winner was a slam dunk for Luis (who has a 10.2” Apple iPad on the way to him, courtesy of our sponsor Adorama), but we couldn’t - we refused - to choose between our two grand prize finalists. Fortunately, when we explained our predicament to Fujifilm, they kicked in another camera, their new X-T200 with image-stabilized, power zoom kit lens. That X-T200 is on its way to Chris Griffith, the Fujifilm X100V to Simon Tasker.

I managed to misspell the country of Colombia, even though I absolutely know how to spell it. I also erred - and I know better than this, too — when I listed one contestant’s country as Vilnius (it is a city in Lithuania). Sigh.