I have a friend, whom I won’t name, who takes the most amazing Instagram photos. They’re stunning, every bit as good as anything shot with a DSLR. And that’s because they are shot with a DSLR. Which sucks.

[...]

There are a lot of places to showcase great photography online. Flickr, Picassa, Smugmug. I fully expect to see lots of awesome, highly processed shots of Fireworks on those sites on July 5 and July 6 and, Hell, even July 10. But on Instagram if I’m seeing fireworks shots a day or two later it’s a little jarring. Moreover, if everyone starts using it the way my friend does, it’s going to kill it. Instead of a window, it will become an archive.

And to be clear, this has nothing to do with the gamification features on Instagram. Sure, everybody loves to get their own little hearts and stars. But who cares how many likes somebody else’s stuff gets? Ultimately, it’s not about that.

(via Cut It Out Instagram Cheaters! – gizmodo.com)

I agree completely. I have followed even worse offenders, who seemed to think that Instagram was a good place to share other people’s photographs, uncredited.

My Instagram pictures were all generated on my iPhone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that my Instagram pictures are all photographs.

For me, a great Instagram picture is an interesting scene, an unusual perspective or detail of something otherwise mundane (joel_hughes does this brilliantly) or something timely (this morning, bondomatic has been posting pictures from a hot air balloon).

Though my recent Instagram pictures have been particularly dull, I won’t be tempted to spice them up with DSLR shots any time soon.