how i make an instagram post

maybe this is a really self-centered post for me to make but i have a very particular process to it. maybe it's not even particular, maybe everyone does it this way. i think too much about these things. how do you make instagram posts? tell me in the comments. regardless, here we go.

i try to make an instagram post every month. if i have something particularly eventful or that has a lot of photos (e.g. my montreal trip over thanksgiving break) i’ll make extra posts. months segment things nicely, and also tend to be a good timeframe where i can cover all the things that happened.

i started making posts this summer, when, after some prodding, i realized that i actually liked the way i looked in photos and could post them. i made 8 posts catching up my life since the start of college, although i'm fairly sure i didn't post any photos of me from the fall semester.

to start, i go through all the photos from the month and put everything i think might be good in an album. often this involves a couple duplicates, as well as versions of shots that i think will crop differently and want to check which one i want.

once i have all the raw photos (this month i had 24), i start narrowing. some photos just aren’t that good comparatively on a second pass, sometimes i don’t need quite that many photos of one person, it very much depends on the month. i try to get down to 10 photos, even though instagram raised the limit. i could be pretentious and claim it’s an exercise in craft, but it’s also just habit and feels like the right number. narrowing can be tricky, and often i'll sit on it for a day or two and come back.

this month was interesting because i had a lot of photos from shows and low-light dorm rooms which were all kind of terrible quality, and a bunch of pictures from frisbee that i was considering making into their own post. i think the final post suffers from too much frisbee syndrome (tm) but i didn't feel like changing it.

once i've narrowed, i crop everything down to square. instagram changed the profile grid ratio recently and i'm going to be angry about it for a while. i put a lot of care into cropping. my time doing digital and film photography in an academic setting taught me the importance of careful cropping. sometimes, i can't get a photo to crop well and i'll swap it out for another. a few times, i've made a post in a different aspect ratio to allow for different crops. sometimes i'll touch up the editing on a photo, but usually that's not needed.

the photos are gradually placed in an order. this is never at a consistent time in the process. i'll consider order as part of narrowing, or do it before cropping, or partially crop and then order, or just do it last. i try to vary types of photos and give a sense of flow to the post. this could be narrative or aesthetic.

lastly, i pick a caption. common caption sources include in-jokes from the month, a phrase that wormed its way into my head, or an event.

then i post it! that's all.