Instagram, the wildly popular mobile-only photo sharing social network, is my favourite app for sharing my iPhoneography. And although I enjoy posting my images on Instagram for my friends and followers to see, I enjoy even more viewing the photography that other people around the world are making. I find it incredibly inspirational to see the places people live, work and visit and how they interpret these spaces, moments in their days and the people they encounter along their way.
A few months ago I stumbled upon an Instagram user called @penguinstagram. I was immediately taken with the imagery on the Penguinstagram feed, but what really caught my attention was how the photographs were coupled with extended captions -- in fact, passages from books -- helping the viewer actually visualize the literature.
Upon closer review, it became clear that Penguinstagram's photographs were actually crowdsourced from the Instagram community, with the work of many different photographers exhibited on the feed, coupled with relevant excerpts from books written by Penguin Books' authors.
Created for Penguin Books India by Ranadip De, Edwin Tam and Suhaimi Saadan from digital agency Futurist in Singapore, Penguinstagram is actually a clever, interactive marketing campaign.
|
According to Ranadip, the creative challenge facing their client is that the printed word now competes against a vast digital landscape including videos, blogs, tweets, and other online news. Futurist's creative brief, therefore, was to devise a campaign that would help Penguin Books India stay relevant to a digitally savvy audience with short attention spans.
Futurist's consumer insights where that "humans are social animals -- or rather they’re social media obsessed animals -- who love consuming bite-sized web content on the go. And people visualise what they read."
Thus, Penguinstagram was born as a ‘stealth’ social media campaign that meets these challenges and "celebrates the beauty and power of the written word, and the pictures they conjure up in our imagination."
Uniquely, Instagram users can not only comment and 'Like' Penguinstagram's photos, but they can also collaborate on the project. In fact, Ranadip recently contacted me and asked if I would be interested in contributing some of my iPhoneography to the Penguinstagram feed. In the spirit of collaboration and community, I agreed.
Alongside around a dozen other talented Instagram users, a handful of my photographs have appeared on the
|
Penguinstagram feed so far. It's been exciting for me to see my work paired alongside literary passages, often casting a different light on my imagery and giving new meaning to my photographs than perhaps I intended when I originally made them.
I love the digital world we live in. Our ability to connect and share (photography, literature) with like-minded individuals, whether around the world or in our own backyards, is a wonder of our modern time. It is incredibly exciting that I can find creative partnerships anywhere. What's more exciting is sometimes they even find me.
Browse my Instagram feed @scottawoodward or see more of my iPhoneography on Flickr.
|