From what I'm seeing, most people are not adding borders on their Instagram photos anymore. Borders used to be basically standard-- part of the way we all looked to Instagram to make our less-than-spectacular mobile photos beautiful.
Now almost no one I follow regularly on Instagram uses them, or least uses them very rarely. Why is that? My guess:
- we want the extra space to capture as much of our photograph moment as possible
- "square" has become enough of a framing accent to a photo that borders often feel repetitive
- borders have started to feel very generic + cheesy, exposing the repetitiveness of using the same stylized filters over and over
- phone cameras keep getting better, so stylizing photos seems less and less necessary
That last point is interesting, because I'm even using filters less and less all together on Instagram photos. Many of the filters can make a photo a bit grainier, less real. Instagram is now the best place to share and enjoy photography as a whole, and and less a utility for making photos prettier. It's replaced the camera on many people's iPhone screens.
I think these are pretty big and exciting developments in the Instagram ecosystem. It's interesting to see, after all the bells and whistles, its the community that's most compelling. And it contributes to Instagram's potential for longevity.
What does everyone else think?
