Instagram announced today that the square-only limitation for the photos posted in the network will be old stories we'll have to tell our grandsons.
As said in Instagram's blog and commented by us:
In addition to square posts — you can now share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on Instagram
WOW! Everything now is permitted and it seems pretty good, right?
At first it may seem interesting the fact that we won't have to deal with more colored or blurred background frames photos in our feed, but we lose some things with this change.
At first, I would like everyone to consider the fact that every platform we use today has its difference and uniqueness. Instagram started with the idea of bringing back the retro feeling of instant pictures, that got really famous because of Polaroid.
They limited the picture ratio to fit a square(the original size of instant pictures as you can see on the left) and added filters and vignetting to them, giving a unique feeling to each and every photo posted on the network.
It was a great strategy at the right time handmade and old school things started to get popular again.
Basically, The filters were a hit. Everyone wanted to edit their photo and people were even knowing each and every filter by their name, that weren't that common as you can see below:
As anything that becomes a hit it got copied, a lot. Every new photo app or photo-based social network started to add filters and vignetting to them.
And which other characteristic was ignored by them all? The square. I can guarantee that if you show a teen a square photo and ask what it is they'll definitely say: Instagram photo!
That's one of the things they are giving up, their identity.
It can be seen as a strategy to feel more like a social sharing platform, something that Flickr always wanted to be and they achieved. Instagram is the one and greatest photo-video social network in 2015.
The biggest concern is:
Now that they are like everyone else, without format constraints and with a little less identity, how long will they be able to survive?
The real reason
As we all know, this action was led because of the users, who weren't respecting the limits of the platform. Instagram’s exact reason is explained in the quote below:
It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end.
Shame on you all! Rants apart, I’ve worked with products before and I know that software companies must respect and honor their users needs and critiques. Simple as that, now everybody will feel as if they were using the platform in the right way.
Client users = Client Business
How it will integrate with the current platform
Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way. To keep the clean feel of your profile grid, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.
Since we would have three different proportions — Square, Horizontal, and Vertical — Instagram decided to stick with the square proportion for the profile grid. So, prepare yourself for surprise elements whenever you open a new picture.
This can lead into creative techniques of hiding special things at the extremes of the photos, but it can also be very bad.
If you are composing your photo in full-size and it's cropped,
your thumbnails will probably loose their power.
A possible solution to that issue would be to let the user upload their photo and then select how they would like the thumbnail to be shown. Just like the common solution for profile photos.
The eternal questioning
We’re especially excited about what this update means for video on Instagram, which in widescreen can be more cinematic than ever.
Yes, we see life through our eyes in horizontal, we see more elements in videos and photos when they are horizontal, but we use the telephone in another orientation.
That's the biggest problem of amateur visual content creation in modern world. Photographers and Cinematographers know that horizontal is the best orientation for shooting. We used to do it right, because cameras were always horizontal, but smartphones came and we use the vertically. The consequence? We record and shoot vertically.
If we are seeing things only in our phones that's ok, but the problem is when we open it in our computers or TVs. We have the same problem of having to fill the spaces with new colored and blurred frames. Nothing will change.
What concerns me the most
We continue to be inspired by the creativity and diversity of the Instagram community, and we can’t wait to see what you create next.
Instagram has grown to be the place for creative photos and creative people. The possibilities of built-in photo edition and the constraints of the square photo brought the best of people.
It's a lot harder to create a compelling photo when we have less space and dynamics for composition, but it's also a lot easier to adapt the photo to the way we want when we have a “simplified photoshop” inside our phone.
My biggest fear for the platform itself is that reducing the constraints could cause a reduction of its overall creativity. It'll be easier and probably more appealing for most people to with the easy solution of posting the original horizontal/vertical video or photo.
At my first attempt to write this article, I realised how the constraints and limitations of Instagram helped me to get more creative and to learn more about myself. I'm a HUGE fan of Instagram and I hope it can reinvent itself across the year.
