my own insta ;)

Photo sharing app

Berlin, 2020

In 2020 I started an online photo diary on my website, as an alternative to social media.

Background

I often make experiments and little projects, which I'm not properly documenting online. It's the same when I'm working on bigger projects. Being in the flow, I might take photos of the progress with my smartphone, but at the end, no one ever sees those pictures. I feel like I should probably share more on social networks, but those platforms always make me feel uncomfortable for a whole bunch of reasons.

At the same time, I actually do want to have the comfort of posting photos quickly online. And ideally, I even want a few more things:

  • Open access
    photos can be accessed by anybody on the Internet
  • Aesthetic presentation
    no ads, metrics or clutter
  • HQ archive
    photos are accessible in their original quality

To get this all, I built my own insta ;) which is basically a few PHP and Javascripts. There's a backend with which I can upload, caption and sort my photos in a quick and convenient way. And there's a simple front end, which shows all photos as a list.

I am currently experimenting with the third version. Now I can also write text-only posts and I can also upload mp4 videos, which makes it some sort of a microblogging software. Due to the tags, I can now automatically assemble albums for my projects and it's easier to find specific pictures.

Kati has a very specific fork for her fungi photos running. This one provides taxonomic information about mushrooms that she found.

TAKE ME TO A RANDOM PROJECT!