If you’re reading this book, chances are you’ve already downloaded the free Instagram app for your iPhone, have snapped a few photos on your own, and probably posted a handful as well. Maybe you have some followers, maybe you don’t... perhaps you’ve found a few interesting Instagram photographers to follow and have been endlessly entertained by the constant stream of funky photographic goodness flowing by. But you may still be asking yourself, why? Why is this different from posting photos on Twitter or Facebook or any other site?

Two words.

Photography. Community.

Twitter is all about the text you write: 140 characters or less of witty banter, and sure you can attach a photo to it, but it’s really all about the text. Oh, and changing the world—that too. Facebook is the social phenomenon of course, allowing you to connect with long-lost friends and even make some new ones. Instagram, though, is entirely about the photograph. Notice when you swim the stream, what you see are photos. Yes, there’s some text, and some likes and comments, but really, it’s all about the photograph. That’s what makes Instagram unique. You can’t even post without a photo. You don’t post text and add a photo to it—you make a picture and add text to that (but only if you want to).

But it’s no fun posting photos that no one sees. And it’s loads of fun seeing what other people are doing with their photos. So you build a social circle, just like the other social platforms. You follow those that are interesting, and you stop following those that just share photos of their cat, Mr. Giggles. Sure, just like any other social platform, you’ll see loads of rubbish—but the beauty of Instagram is that most posters really do care about the quality of their images. In fact, I’d go as far as suggesting that many users who start by posting boring photos slow down or even stop once they realize the caliber of much of the work on view. Hopefully they are inspired by the stream of photographic goodness and want to make their photos as good, or better, than the others they’re seeing. And that’s what this book is for.

This book has been written to help you get the most out of Instagram. To guide you toward making better and better pictures that more and more people want to see—including yourself. After all, if you don’t enjoy looking at your photos, why should anyone else?