HelloLorena Instagram

Ok, calming down... the way I see it is this:  Each photo has to live well around it's 3x3 cube that surrounds it.  I look at one picture inside the square of 3x3 and then try to make sure it is not being crowded by the others.  I make sure they all have breathing room around each other so that you are able to view the feed without feeling overwhelmed by each photo.  You gotta give your photos some negative space, i.e. elbow room, so that each photo can tell a story on their own.

Since I like each of my instagram photos to be able to roll on their own without the photo next to it cramping it's style, I had to devise a plan to make this happen. I got tired of posting a photo only to delete it immediately after seeing how bad it looked next to the last one I had posted.  The only way to do this is by being able to visualize how it will look among it's friends before I post it.  Not all photos play well next to each other, you know.  So I found a way to do this free and so easy by creating an iPhone folder named "my instagrams" and arranging the photos within it to resemble my instagram feed.

As you add photos to Instagram, these new photos will go above the last row and so on.  Here I can see that these are next in line to be posted.  These are basically my "future posts" for the whole entire week!  I am now able to plan my captions in a note or planner ahead of time and be ready for when the time comes.  You can label the captions: Sunday 1, 2, 3 and you'll know which ones they are referring to.

So here's how I did it:

1. You make or find a picture for each day of the week. (I added my samples) They say you should post 1-3 photos a day, so this 4 photo grid in the folder view in the iPhone is perfect for this.  You can put your day picture on the right or left side of the grid, whichever one floats your boat.  I just happen to like mine on the right side.
2. Any photo that has been edited and ready to go gets selected and added to "My Instagrams" folder.  These are photos that are completely ready to go so I never have to worry about the "not knowing what I'm going to post next" syndrome.  So they go from "my Favorites" to "my instagrams" folder once they are edited. 
3. I arrange my photos by dragging and dropping whenever I feel they will look better.  This is where the fun happens because this is where I realize I may need more "human" photos or "cat" photos or maybe even "things" or "places" photo.  If you don't know about how to create the CATEGORIES for your instagram posts, then visit this post I created about it.  These just happen to be my categories or things that I'm into. 

The favorite thing is that you can move photos around (you can't do this in the Favorites folder) or add a new photo in if the occasion pops up when you need to.  I edit so many photos that my Instagram folder usually contain over 200 photos so I always have something to choose from.

So there you have it, you can now be organized and prepared and ready to take your Instagram feed game to the next level because now you'll be able to visualize how your photos will look without feeling each other out. Ew gross, you never want them doing that. If only those darn captions were this easy. Let me know if you have any ideas on that one for me.

So enjoy!

P.S. Here are the photos I used for the days of the week already in square format: