For my final Writing for Digital Media project, I decided to start an Instagram account that details all of my travels so far. Since I was a young girl, photo albums have been my favorite way to pass the time. Whether it's creating them, or flipping through their pages, I love to get lost in memories. My family has always been one that likes to record everything. Home movies were common growing up, and there was always a camera around. So, now that I am starting to travel on my own, I love taking pictures of everything I encounter. Whether it's of a cute mushroom, or of some sigs I see along the way I like the idea of freezing that moment and keeping it forever.
I have experience with the Instagram application, and felt that this would be my best outlet to put a collection of my favorite memories together. The functions of Instagram made this project generally painless and actually very fun! I really enjoyed trying to make all of the designs flow together and create a narrative with pictures. Now that Instagram has a video feature I am excited to utilize that even more in the future! My favorite slow motion video on the page can be seen here: Chasing Waterfalls
Another feature of the site that I found very useful was the ability to post multiple pictures in one post. At first, I wasn't sure how I felt about this. Through using it on my personal account, and now on this one, I have grown to really love it! It allows the creator to have more freedom with their narrative and tell little individual stories within one much larger story. An example of this feature can be seen in this post: Glacier Cruise. With more practice I think this will become one of my favorite features to use! It is much more interesting to look at than a plain post, which looks like this: Disneyland.
Although Instagram does a great job with allowing their users the freedom of editing and filters, my favorite feature like this is the collage feature! If a user has a post that they would rather not use the multiple upload feature for, they can simply make a collage instead! I find this really useful when it seems that the multiple picture feature is not applicable. I used it for this post! Utah Hiking
Overall, this project helped me to see the challenges in putting together a visually appealing online narrative that incorporates all elements of a platform. I am very glad that the creative process that I went through for this project brought me to this end result, and I believe that I will continue to use this page as a travel diary for years to come!
