Instagram will be holding its first ever photography exhibition in India today, where it will showcase photographs generated from its app. The exhibition shall run till January 9 and was inaugurated by Derek O’Brien, Member of Parliament. The exhibition is being held at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) gallery in Kolkata and will center around the theme ‘Celebrating Diversity in Bengal’. The images will showcase the diversity found in the state and will include images of the landscape, people, food, wildlife, and more.
Instagram states, “The visual documentation of these moments on Instagram by the Indian community demonstrates how people are increasingly using images to communicate and experience the world around them. With 80 million photos posted on Instagram every day, if something is happening, it is likely being captured on Instagram, taking these images to the world across cultural and language barriers”
The images showcased in the exhibition will no doubt be aided by the changes that Instagram has recently made to its application. Back in July last year, the company rolled out an update that let users upload higher resolution images on its photo sharing platform. Earlier, the maximum resolution allowed was 640 x 640 pixels, which was rather small. The new update however allows users to upload images with a resolution of 1080 x 1080 pixels. This much needed update ensured that Instagram made better use of the high quality images taken by modern smartphone cameras. It also ensures that the photographs not only appear crisper, but also avoids large sections of an image being cropped out.
In August, Instagram started rolling out the v7.5 update for Android and iOS users. This update allowed them to upload photographs and videos in landscape and portrait mode aside from the usual square mode. However, the company has stated that all landscape and portrait images will center cropped in grid view, but will appear full size in a follower's feed. It also said that the uploaded images should have an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 4:5.