One of the things we try to do each year at our College UM ARMY mission trip, is to put together a slide show of photos from the week. Normally a few people with cameras would travel from site to site, taking photos. Then they would turn them in to me, I would create a slide show that we could show at the end of the week.
This year we tried something different. Instead of one slide show, from a few sources shown at the end of the week, we had a week long slide show, from many people, using instagram.
Instagram is an app that allows you to take photos, add fun, quirky filters and share them through instagram, Facebook, twitter, email and more. One of the features is the ability to add a #hashtag to your photos, and then be able to search for photos with the same tag.
So we set up a hashtag for our camp, #cuma2012, and told everyone about it. Many of the students had their iPhones or android phones with the instagram app. We also gave them a photo challenge of the day to help them get started.
The result was over three hundred fifty photos submitted by campers themselves. For our end of week slide show I was able to download the photos from a site called Inkstagram, which is a great web interface for the instagram photos.
Even better, our slide show wasn’t just a one time, end of week thing. We were able to log on and see photos as camp was happening. We saw ramps built, campers having fun and smiling clients starting from day one.
How have you used instagram or hashtags in your ministry.
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