MY FIRST REEL
MARCH 23 2022
I won’t talk about Instagram reels too often on my blog because, between you and me, they’re not my favorite… I might be old school but I liked Instagram when it was just about sharing photos and not short attention grabbing videos, but there’s no denying that Instagram has been pushing reels for a while now and I do think it helped my account grow so I can't knock them too hard. I shared my first reel on November 20 2020 and it wasn’t spectacular, it only got 116 likes, but I remember it really well because a few hours after I shared it I got a notification that 1,000 people had watched it. And back then 1,000 was a huge number for my account. I was shocked because I pretty much just shared my reel to the abyss of instagram reels, I didn't even push it to my followers yet 1,000 people still watched it, and a little while later I got a notification for 3,000. I was in disbelief. It was crazy that a little account like mine could reach thousands of people with a random video that I took while out shooting, I continued to make more and more reels but it all started with this one, a not so amazing video of me putting some Kodak Gold in my F3.
I’ve shared a bunch of reels since my first one, some with much greater success and some that have probably gained me close to 1,000 followers but I remember this first one the best. I think I was just bored at home when I decided to make it and it has completely transformed how I take photos. This is debatably a change for the worse because now I’m always spending time recording video, but still a change nonetheless.
And before I end this small and pointless blog here are the actual pictures that I took when I was recording that reel. It’s pretty easy to overlook the images in reels. From Instagram’s standpoint they’ll push anything that catches peoples attention and sometimes it can just be a video of a camera or a series of 0.1s photos that go so fast no one can actually see the images. It feels like at times all the focus on video has us loosing sight of the photos themselves, I've definitley been guilty of this a few times.. That’s why I try to only create reels when I am actually taking a photo. I haven’t yet created a “false” reel (me out pretending to take photos and then sharing photos from my archive). Usually, every time that I am filming for a reel it is because I am actually out taking pictures. I try to view it as photos first and then reels but I’m finding that instagrams algorithm is making that less and less the case.. cheers to the new tik tok.
Anyway here are the photos from that day.
FYI these were shot on Portra because I finished that roll earlier then decided to film myself loading the roll of Gold that I had brought with me. This was the image that was shot with the Kodak Gold if you were wondering.
Well, that’s all for this week. It’s a pretty quick one, if you’re interested in more of my reels feel free to check out my Instagram page and if you’re curios about how I make them I’m happy to answer any questions! As always thanks for reading!