It’s that time of year when your Instagram feed is covered in warm colours landscapes, sweaters, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes. For McMaster students, Fall brings out the best in our campus as yellow, and maroon leaves compliment our stone buildings and our Marauder spirit. With over 377 acres of campus to explore, we’ve sought out the most popular places on campus to ‘gram so that you can get a killer #autumn Insta pic.
1. Cootes Paradise
https://www.instagram.com/p/tBrf65P61c/?taken-by=emilylise
With a heavy dose of trees, wildlife and water, the wetland located north of campus is filled with many visual opportunities to add to your ‘gram. Sure, it requires a little bit more effort to venture to, but it gives you a chance to show that you’re getting some fresh air without actually needing to go off campus.
2. The Arch
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL_NWnejiKQ/?taken-by=mackenzie.beatty
Popular amongst newly accepted students, and soon-to-be grads, the Arch is an iconic piece of the McMaster landscape. It’s perfect for group pictures with friends, fellow club members or whatever MSU service you’re apart of!
3. University Hall
https://www.instagram.com/p/svclKNxE73/?taken-by=paulhewitt15
Hogwarts, is that you? University Hall is the building that people immediately associate with the McMaster campus, and it shows: at least every other student has a picture of the tower showcased on their feed. With lush vines entrapping the building, you won’t fail to get an epic shot to memorialize your love for Mac.
4. BSB Field
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEEW98vs4wW/?taken-by=ell_v_
From picnics to Light Up the Night, to Lake McMaster, BSB field has it all. One of the most underappreciated places on campus, the field is home to willow trees, high wire walking, and occasionally petting zoos. BSB Field always has something entertaining going on, so capture the moment and let your friends at other schools know how cool Mac is.
5. McMaster Museum of Art
https://www.instagram.com/p/BAkfTtGLC2V/?taken-by=dapperdonats
If you’re searching for more profound visual themes to add to your feed, look no further than the McMaster Museum of Art. The Museum, which is free, rotates its appealing exhibits semi-frequently so you can revisit to capture new pictures. The art is already amazing, making it easier for you to capture a decent photo. Talk about #InstaArt.
6. Ronald V. Joyce Stadium / Track Field B
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLSNzVQASGs/?taken-by=mcmastercheer
The McMaster fields hold some of the most exciting, and most frequent campus events of the year. Track Field B, the artificial turf, houses countless intramural sports teams, as well as football camps, and sports clubs. Our stadium has been featured on a diversity of accounts, including professors, parents, opposing team members and inebriated students. Featured prominently in pictures from Welcome Week and Homecoming, the Ronald V. Joyce Stadium provides a great place to capture Mac spirit in it's most authentic form: yelling at the top of it's lungs at a football game.
7. L.R. Wilson Hall
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMZ6LfDAo3s/?taken-by=griffindow
The building on campus may be new, but it hasn’t taken long to sneak it’s way into Mac students pictures. The glass exterior and it’s modern design make for an easy-on-the-eyes photo, whether shooting from in the building or out. And since the building features a large amount of windows, it’s a great place for selfie lighting.
8. MDCL Waterfall Room
https://www.instagram.com/p/_IbmcPr6H6/?taken-by=wongmys
Check any SRA member or Commerce student’s Instagram account you’ll notice a very common location: the artirum in MDCL. Home to a synthetic waterfall fountain, large windows and many plants, the student dubbed “waterfall room” is the perfect place for your headshots.
9. Somewhere in a res hallway
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMSNUfVgmtd/?taken-by=braedenglen
Maybe you’re planning on showing off what you wore to 1280 the night before, or you just don’t have enough effort to get outside, either way a res hallway is ready and available to be captured. Sure, the corridors aren’t the pretties to look at, but they never fail to remind your audience that you’re a first year who is living up that #ResLyfe
Are these places likely to show up on your friends feed in a couple weeks? Probably. Will they get you a good chunk of likes? Definitely. Let us know your favourite spots to snap a pic on campus!
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We’ve all heard the criticism regarding social media — that, as a generation, we’ve lost the art of conversation and are too self-absorbed and caught up with our social media accounts to connect with each other. I have to disagree. Social media is not inherently restrictive and isolating; it is the way that you choose to use it that determines how you connect with the outside world. You could just as well isolate yourself by immersing yourself in a novel or movie, so why does social media have such a bad rap among older generations?
Contrary to popular belief, we have not lost the art of conversation, we’ve simply come up with new ways to engage in it. I have a few friends who are international students and use platforms like FaceTime and Skype to communicate with family abroad. Just because the conversation occurs through non-traditional media doesn’t mean we shouldn’t embrace the fact that we are able to stay in touch with people miles away.
Even class assignments make use of social media to improve productivity. Think of how many of your Facebook groups are dedicated to schoolwork. Organizing meetings in person is not always feasible. Of course, in-person interaction is a different experience and does help you form bonds with people you may otherwise forget about after the course is complete. However, the reality is that a commuter student, for example, would benefit from an online meeting through sites such as Facebook or Google Hangouts as opposed to altering his or her schedule. Rather than try to find a different time and potentially cancelling meetings altogether, social media provides flexibility for everyone involved.
I’m not advocating that all contact be limited to social media, because that would really limit our communication. Face-to-face interaction ensures that body language is visible and can be interpreted. It can be difficult to get the same intuitive understanding of how someone is feeling through emojis and text. Despite the fact that video chat is available, it is certainly not perfect. While it is important to be able to communicate effectively in person, why shun technology that works in favour of those who prefer to convey their thoughts through a different medium? Social media not only offers a platform that can accommodate busy and conflicting schedules, but it also serves as a comfortable space for people with more introverted personalities who might prefer to communicate online. At the same time, what social media allows us to share with others is probably one of its most innovative and valuable aspects.
Contrary to popular belief, we have not lost the art of conversation, we’ve simply come up with new ways to engage in it.
We all know what it’s like to have an indescribable experience. When I try to describe my summer vacation to my friends, I tend to repeat how amazing, fantastic and wonderful it was, but those words hardly capture the experience accurately. Social media platforms like Snapchat and YouTube take words out of the equation and make experiences shareable without overusing clichéd terms to attempt to explain them. Conversation is important, and contrary to popular belief, millennials do engage in it. Yet, the traditional conversation is not always the best way to communicate. Social media gives us the means to communicate beyond words and to share experiences as they happen rather than after the fact. At the end of the day, social media does not hinder conversation if it is used appropriately. Rather, it connects us with people in unique and valuable ways and enhances our experiences of the world as we share them with people across the globe.
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Once spread solely by word of mouth or reviews on Yelp, food culture is now built upon a foundation of hashtags and Instagram posts. Restaurant-goers discover new places through geotags on Instagram, making up their minds based on the way their friends post photos of their food. In the past, many paused before meals to be thankful for what is in front of them – today, we use that time to take pictures of these meals.
Food is perhaps one of the few things on earth that is universal. Since the beginning of time, the consumption of food has been social, and today’s trend of posting photos of our food on Instagram reflects this very human desire to share our meals with other people. To many, the practice may seem useless and silly: what’s the point of making a fool of yourself at a restaurant or taking any time at all to take a picture of food when you can just eat it?
Whether you partake in food photography or not, it’s important to recognize that this is an interest that has been integrated into our technologically-advanced and media-driven society. You may be someone with this hobby, you may be someone who despises it or you may fall in between as someone who does not participate but appreciates nice photos of delicious food (that’s me). Opinions aside, most of us would be compelled to double-tap an expertly crafted photo – food or otherwise – on the ‘gram.
Natural lighting
Good lighting makes a photo. People who over-do their food snaps are the ones who apply various filters to the original photo in attempt to salvage a dull, lifeless shot that was captured under bad lighting. When done correctly, natural light is the only filter you need. And remember – no flash, ever.
Find the angle
You can add a lot of interest to your photo solely by the angle from which you take it. Certain dishes would look striking when photographed from a birds-eye view, while others (like a detailed, tiered cake) may look best as a close up. Don’t hesitate to take a couple shots from various angles to see what works best.
Subtle edits
If nice, natural light is nowhere to be found, consider downloading editing softwares like VSCO cam and Afterlight. These apps allow you to mess with variables like exposure, saturation and enhancing or reducing shadows or highlights. Nobody wants to see a picture of your burger drenched in the Valencia filter on Instagram; customizing your photo with subtle edits will enhance it rather than make it tacky.
Bold colours
Play around with colours. The best food pictures are ones that feature an interesting contrast of different hues. Try pairing duller and brighter tones, or incorporate bright colours that pop out. Place orange wedges next to resplendent red pomegranate seeds. Throw some lime-green edamame beans over a bed of purple kale. It’s difficult to make a piece of brown, charcoaled steak look enticing.
Resist perfection
If you’re taking a slice from a cake and a few crumbs fall onto the tabletop, don’t clean it up! Some disorder and mess adds charm and can make the photo more lively, just like the berries scattered across the table in this photo. Meticulously arranged photos can end up looking unsettling, lifeless and even sterile.
Eat your food
The most important tip, and one that people often forget, is to not wait too long before eating. It may be enticing to position and re-position your plate over and over again in order to get “the perfect shot.” However, no shot is worth it if the dish in front of you ends up melting or getting cold! While food photography can be an interesting hobby, food should ultimately be a feast for your tastebuds.
Photo Credit: Desserts for Breakfast
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Being “instafamous” is a surprisingly difficult task. Instagram is a young person’s game; over Christmas I noticed all my younger family friends had at least hundreds of followers. This unique breed of users, neither celebrities nor popular bloggers, walk a tightrope between established conventions and unique content. After talking to a few of these social butterflies in hopes that some of their magical pixie dust will rub off on my inferior Instagram account, here are some tips I got on how to join the upper echelon of “instalikes.”
The type of content you have is integral. If your account isn’t based on the adventures of your cat, then refrain from taking too many selfies with her peeping out of your backpack, no matter how cute and tempting it is. Keep pictures of inspirational texts to a minimum and only for appropriate times. Strike a balance between established shot styles (picstiches, #fromwhereistand etc.) and a creative shot of your S.O.’s silhouette in your bedroom curtain.
One of Instagram’s notable features at its initial release was the wide range of filters available that improved your mediocre photo. While photo editing is still an integral part of Instagram, filters have gotten a bad rap recently. It’s now for the amateur Instagram blogger, so just stick to an editor like VSCO. Side note, #nofilter should only be used ironically.
The dreaded likes per minute is that stomach churning feeling you get when you keep refreshing your page in the first 20 minutes to see how many likes you get. If it doesn’t break a certain threshold then your picture is destined for Instagram mediocrity. Personally, I’m a strong believer that you shouldn’t concern yourself with such things, but the LPM is the harsh reality for the “instafamous” wannabe.
As a burgeoning Instagrammer, hashtagging is an indispensable way to reach your target demographic. Though be careful to not use hashtags excessively; #food, #foodporn, #delicious, #beef, and that list of 15 you have for that one photo of your dinner is too much. At the very least, post your hashtags in a separate comment. In a similar vein, don’t write a paragraph to caption your photo because no one likes reading on Instagram.
Engage with the Instagram community! People tend to forget the social aspect of Instagram in that you are encouraged to interact with similar people whom you would otherwise be unable to. Follow accounts that are similar to yours and like or comment on their photos. The discover page is a great place to get started. Don’t neglect your own followers either! Even if you don’t hit that follow back, take a minute to check out their page and like their media.
By: Mitali Chaudhary
Humans have always marveled at the curves and fine lines of their own faces—thousands of years of portraiture and art can attest to this. But now that we can immortalize our pouts with the simple tap of a button, our inner narcissists have never been more prevalent. This rising trend of taking ridiculous amounts of “selfies,” and meticulously inspecting them for flaws, not only reveals our infatuation with the “perfect body” and ourselves but also displays blatant selfishness and an inflated self-worth, especially when taken in inappropriate places.
Unfortunately, technology only propagates this culture. Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media platforms provide the perfect environment to post selfies, where the poster can get instant validation and encouragement to publish more of the same. Another example is Snapchat, in which the whole point is to send innumerable selfies (with one line of text). In fact, recent scientific studies show that some degree of narcissism correlates directly with the number of followers, likes, status updates and, of course, selfies an individual has. Because in this digital age it is wholly accepted to do so, we can easily engage in shameless self-promotion without consequence.
This culture shows its truly ugly side when people are driven to take selfies in extremely inappropriate situations. A few unforgettable examples include “selfie at Auschwitz,” or the one where a woman took a selfie while a man was in the background being talked down from the side of a bridge by the police. There are also the countless selfies taken at funerals. Such behaviour demonstrates callousness and a shift in moral values caused by an increased focus on oneself and, although these cases are few, show a possible path our society can take due to extreme selfie culture.
It’s a given that seeking the approval of others and taking the occasional selfie is healthy and fun, to an extent. Our obsession with being admired by others and believing that the world cares about the details of our lives however, is not. If we, as a society, continue to place our attention on our physical selves, then empathy and the willingness to help others will inevitably decline further. This is a societal problem that we can afford. So, love yourself, but not too much.
I’ve been carrying this camera around for the last twelve hours. It’s brown, made of plastic (with a rubber inlay) and has a built-in, non-removable fisheye lens. It prints onto 35mm film. To be perfectly honest it looks and feels and like a toy. This is the charm of Lomography.
Put simply, Lomography is a company that specializes in creating quirky, compact, affordable and uniquely inspired analogue cameras. I’d like to emphasize “unique” because I’m fairly confident that there is no other way to acquire a film camera with four (or eight, or nine) lenses in a grid pattern, all capable of taking sequential action shots and leaving your friends asking which editing program you had to use to get those effects.
The multi-lens camera line, while arguably the most popular, doesn’t even scratch the surface in the grand scope (get it?) of Lomography’s products. Other notable mentions include pinhole cameras, panoramic cameras, and even a hand-cranked video camera to produce retro silent films. For the analogue photography aficionados (I’m sure you’re out there somewhere), there is a wide selection of nicer cameras with minimal but effective aperture and shutter-speed selection settings, as well as a line of varied films for different print styles.
The history of the Lomography company is almost as cool as the products they sell, so bear with me for a century. In 1914, LOMO was founded in Russia to produce cameras, lenses, and weapon sights during the First World War. They later underwent a few corporate name changes and began to focus on high-end lens development, but not before leaving behind the Lomo Kompakt Automat or LOMO LC-A.
Jump ahead to 1991, when a pair of Viennese students picks up the LOMO LC-A in an old-school camera shop and fall in love with the highly lit and unpredictable nature of the analogue gem. The boys start up a company to recreate the camera, and spend the next two decades rapidly expanding as their retro empire grows into a sprawling cultural phenomenon. Now, with a substantial online following and stores all over the world, they have succeeded in keeping film photography around and appealing (for the time being).
Lomography seems to be a hit or miss topic with most people I’ve spoken to over the last few weeks. The common responses to my condensed summary are “you can still buy film?” or “why wouldn’t you just get a digital camera?” The first question is actually not as laughable as it might seem. The last few years have been a whirlwind of sharper, more user-friendly, and more affordable digital cameras. 2012 was the year of dumbed down and highly accessible “vintage photo effect” apps, with Instagram eventually emerging as the crown jewel. In light of all this, it’s almost surprising that a market for analogue photography still exists. This brings us to the next question: why?
It’s the same reason you can still find a record player and vinyl records with relative ease: something about it was worth hanging on to. There is often an argument made for the quality of film prints, but it’s becoming impossible to compete with the digital camera, so what is it? I chalk it up to nostalgia and the surprising, unpredictable nature of film. It’s the sunspots and slightly excessive exposure that make memorable photos, and analogue photography preserves the element of surprise that digital photography has spent years eliminating. Nostalgia speaks for itself - unless of course you think your grandkids will appreciate the wistful magic of clicking through thousands of your ancient Facebook albums.
Is Lomography flawless? No. It doesn’t offer digital clarity and you have to buy film pretty often. These are the things that have turned a generation away from analogue photography, but they are also the endearing qualities of a unique art form that isn’t ready to be laid to rest just yet. Pick up one of their cheaper cameras in the Toronto store location or via the website if you feel like giving it a shot, and spread the word: newer is not always better.
Brody Weld
