A meeting with the Instagrammer community in Santiago
When I started the project of this blog, it also began my participation in Social Media. Previously I’ve only used to be on Facebook to share my photos with family and friends and I was a total voyeur on Twitter.
When I saw Instagram for the first time it was love at first sight! The ability to share your photos with many people and see the work and the way others look at the world, just loved it, plus the ability to share them real-time with a community makes it much more fun.
Today many of us share images through this medium and we ‘like’ and comment on photographs of those who we follow, but: Do you know who are you following?
It is because of that question that have emerged worldwide meetings of Instagrammers called InstaMeets, where users gather for different activities related to photography and where they can meet ‘in real life’ with those who interact daily through this network.
In Santiago, Chile happened to be the first massive Instameet August 22, 2015, before they had organized small meetings among friends that arose spontaneously among users of the network. In this case was rather a InstaWalk, which was a walking tour to explore downtown Santiago.
It was organized by four photographers
Sebastian Runner @sebastian_runner, Alex Indo @indolatinox, Andres Gutierrez @santiaguino, Maritza González @marytafeliz.
As @sebastian_runner told us “The idea came from our own experience enhanced by influences from foreign experiences. From our experience as users have developed links from our need to communicate through the platform and come to create real ties, out of the virtual. It is then that we decided to extend these experiences on a large scale and that many more are encouraged to break through the barriers of virtual. The goal is for users to share and interact and humanize the @. So they can be motivated and to keep generating quality content, we make use of public spaces and this empower us as a community. ”
It was estimated around 300 people who arrived during that morning to the InstaMeet Santiago, which leads us to take second place in Latin America in terms of call. First is Mexico with 400 people. One of the most remarkable things about this event is that it was a cross-call which came toddlers to 70 years adult, families, groups of friends and other went there solo, like me. The InstaMeet Santiago not only involved people living in the same city, but attendees came from other cities such as Concepcion, Valparaiso, La Serena, and some foreigners like Venezuelans and Argentines.
@sebastian_runner told us, what stands in Santiago about this event is “The response to the call and the diversity of styles and looks. The people responded to the need for community, empower us in a common activity where various profiles coexist. The expression as an invitation to leave the routine. Chile in general is going through a national awakening and a need for empowerment of public space, and Instagram provides powerful mechanisms of expression for the user generating motivativation and the aim to go on street and capture it under each one vision. If we review the Hashtag we’ll see a rich diversity in the ways people noted Santiago.
The HashTag #Instameet_Santiago was used 2159 times until August 26, 2015, and you can see how different it is the look of each person behind the lens of an analog camera or from your cell phone. Instagram users use both media to upload photography to the network and at this event Instagrammers were mostly photographing the city with digital cameras or DSLRs.
Anyone can organize an InstaMeet!
InstaMeet are happening all the time around the world. Meetings and exchanges of knowledge about photography or specific topics in any kind of location.
Anyone who has an account on Instagram can organize one of these meetings and the number of participants is unlimited. They are a wonderful opportunity to connect with the community in which you take part every day, make connections with other users and share tips with other members of the community.
At the Instagram Blog you can check the new InstaMeets planned as well as inspiration to keep your account and at the at the web dedicated to the Instagram community more info about how to organize an InstaMeet.
The organizers of the InstaMeet Santiago are planning upcoming events, so stay tuned to see their accounts when they’ll announce a new event in the city. They are also interested in promoting more events to meet with people in public spaces related to art and culture and to create partnerships with instances of the same nature as encouraging people with photographic outputs, if you have any ideas feel free to contact them!
These are some of my favorite photographs generated with the hashtag #Instameet_Santiago
wow, so many people!