Instagram @lsqrd42

 Yes, I'm still on Instagram, and have been a lot more active over the past few months.  While I do have an instagram tag, there's only a few posts there, and it's been 17 months since the last one.  I guess I need to talk about it more...   I'm no influencer, though, with a whopping 262 followers (as of today).  That's OK, I still enjoy it.  My instagram has a lot more photos from my phone.  More "slice of life" type photos, less "High Art".  I also enjoy the other photographers who come up in my feed.

Anyway, here's the last 2 dozen posts, all of which are from my phone camera.  I'd welcome your views (or even a follow!)

And I'm always happy when I can put data in a spreadsheet and make a graph!  Here's my weekly Views and account views for the last 12 weeks.  A nice trend in my painfully low numbers:

Quilt Shops and Photo Ops

 Back in July of 2020, I started a second Instagram account, Quilt Shops and Photo Ops, to document the overlapping hobbies of my wife and I.  Over the next 13+ months, we were moderately active, with a range of photos taken on road trips, and/or sewing/quilting related.  Then life intruded, with job changes, family issues, etc.  Anyway, that IG went stagnant.  My other account, lsqrd42 never stopped completely, but did slow down for a bit.

Anyway, life eventually settled out, and work situation has been adjusted, and we're back to doing some of the things we were talking about 2 years ago.  So, about 6 weeks ago, I decided to restart QSPO.  The traffic (so far) has been modest (to be polite), but that's OK, it was pretty modest before.  On the other hand, if you wanted to give it a look (or a follow!), I sure wouldn't mind...

Now the web site?  We should probably pull the plug on that.  It never really got off the starting line, and I don't see that happening at this point...  Anyway, check out QSPO, let me know your opinion!

Instagram Top 9 for 2021

 I've seen quite a few "Top 9" posts on my Instagram feed, so I decided to do one myself.  So here you go, my Top 9 posts based on Likes *with Reach as tie-breaker).

Of course, my Instagram is kind of pitiful, with a mere 3,806 "Likes" on  posts.  But then again, I have less than 150 followers.  It does seem to be growing though.

Check it out @lsqrd42

Instagram - September Look-Back

 After doing this for June and July, I forgot August.  Oh well, here's a look back at September on my Instagram account:  lsqrd42.  

I really upped my activity over the past 2 months.  From March through July, I averaged 0.67 posts/day.  That jumped to 1.23 in July and 1.68 in August.  Why?  Well, I discovered mid July that you can now post from a computer.  Not sure when they added that but I just discovered it.  And that changes everything.  I'm not sure if it was because of the increased posting, or some sort of critical mass, or what, but I added quite a few followers in September, which got me to a level where I can get analytics from instagram.  COOL!

Here's my top 5 posts for the month, ranked by "Likes".  Listed  in chronological order (oldest to newest):

Chaos, Downtown St. Louis

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Old Barn, near Feildton, IL

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Abandoned church, Gilead, Illinois

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Duke Homestead, Fall 1981

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Watertower, St. Jacob, IL

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Of these 5, 1 is are from my phone, 3 from my Fujifilms, and 1 scanned from an old print.  That's pretty consistent with the month, where ratio of Mirrorless/DSLR was 3:1 over iPhone.  Last moth over 1/2 the posts were iPhone, but for the year the ratio is 1:25 Mirrorless for every phone, not too far off center.

The Guitar Player

Way back when I was still a novice at photography, I took a photo of a friend playing guitar, sitting on the hood of my father's car.  Probably spring on 1977.  I was trying to do some cool lighting, with the sun reflecting off the guitar.  This would've been my first SLR (Canon-TX), all manual.  Almost certainly Kodak Tri-X film, developed and printed in my basement.  Well, you can see from the scan below, it was all a bit beyond my capabilities at the time.  But not so bad that I didn't keep a print of it.

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Fast forward 44 years or so, and I came across the print while digging through old photos.  I was looking for :throwback" photos for my Instagram account.  I decided to scan it (as seen above), and see what I could do in Photoshop (Elements).  Below is an improved version, mostly just adjusting Layers.  But I did have to do some burning to try and fix the somewhat clunky dodging I did on the print:

Much improved, I think.  I wish I had easy access to the negative, it could be interesting to start over from there and see what I could do.  I probably do have the negative, in a box with every other negative from those days.

I sent a copy of the photo to the guy in the picture.  I haven't seen him since the late 70's, but had a couple of email correspondences earlier this century.  For now, though, he's anonymous here.

Instagram, July Look-Back

 Following last month's lead, I decided to do a look back at July's Instagramming.  I figured mid month was good, for thos straggling likes / comments...

Anyway:

I had 23 posts to the LSqrd42 account in July.  Less than the tarhey 1/day average, but better than June's 21.  August is on a better pace, if I can keep it up.  Of those, 21 were in color, 5 were b&w...

Here's my top 5 posts for the month, ranked by "Likes", with "comments" as tie breaker.  Listed  in chronological order (oldest to newest):

Sunset, one day past the Summer solstice

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Grey Headed Coneflower

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You got the right plane, baby, but the wrong airport

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Baby house finch

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C&O Canal hiking trail (Throwback)

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Of these 5, 2 are from my phone, 2 from my Fujifilms, and 1 scanned from an old slide.  By contrast 14 of the 23 posts in July were from the iPhone...  

Our other account, Quilt Shops and Photo Ops remains pretty slow, with only 9 posts there in July.  Way better than June, but still...  Our "intrusive life" issues may be waning, I still hope to get that ramped back up sometime soon-ish.

Instagram, June Look-Back

 So, June was a pretty slow month, photo wise.  As was May.  Sorry about that, a lot of stuff going on.  I can't promise, but I do plan to do more going forward.

Anyway, now that were a week into July, I decided to look back at Instagram, and see what my Top 5 (popular) images were.  Now, I only had 21 posts to my main account:  lsqrd42 (https://www.instagram.com/lsqrd42/?hl=en).  Pretty mediocre.  And I think my total likes + comments were impacted by the spotty posting.  Regardless, here's the Top 5, in chronological order (oldest to newest):

Red Admiral Butterfly

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Canal Motel

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Watershed Nature Center

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Greenup Covered Bridge

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Southern Illinois Landscape (Farm)

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It's interesting that 4 of these 5 were shot on my Fujifilm X series cameras, only one was taken with my phone.  I tend to stress the iPhone on Instagram, and 12 of 21 posts in June were from the iPhone, so the results this month were disproportionally skewed to the "real" camera.  What can it mean?

Meanwhile, quiltshopsphotoops (https://www.instagram.com/quiltshopsphotoops/?hl=en) was really dead i June, only 3 posts.  That forum was especially hard hit by the intrusive life of the past couple of months.  I do hope to ramp that one back up, if we can get back to day tripping. 

Thanks for supporting my postings, I do appreciate it!