WHETHER you’re moving to university for the first time or you’re a returning student, there are always new things to discover in your city or county. When I first moved to Bristol, I got to know the city by going for walks with my friends, Sometimes we would have a location in mind, and sometimes we would just start walking and see where we ended up. We discovered that Bristol has many striking landmarks, beautiful and unique architecture, and a thriving street art scene. Even though I’ve now been here nearly a decade, I still love to go out with my camera or my phone and take pictures of the things I see. With street art being changed, new buildings being built and old ones coming down, there is always something new to take a photo of. I also love to notice how the flowers and trees change over the seasons.
To begin with, I didn’t do anything with my photos, but when Instagram came along, I started to share them. Instagram quickly became my preferred social network and I enjoyed being part of the online community there. It’s easy to find people living in the same city as you, and who share interests. There are two main ways that I did this; through hashtags and through challenges.
Hashtags
Hashtags and geotags are also useful for researching a new city. I recently went to Lisbon and used #Lisbon to look for restaurants, bars and sights to visit.
Today, two of my favourite hashtags are #Bristol and #igersBristol. I love to see what events are going on, the new places to eat and drink, and new ways to see the city. I’ve found that people who use Instagram love to talk about what they’ve posted, and lots of my good friendships were forged when we chatted about a photo.
IGers is short for InstaGramERS . There are igers community accounts all over the world. You can find them by searching for @igers[cityname], for example @igersBristol or @igersMelbourne. IGers accounts repost photos from their followers of their local area.
Many of the networks organise ‘InstaWalks’ where people who know the area well lead a guided tour showing off all the best photo opportunities. I’ve been on several of these in Bristol, and they helped me find lots of amazing places, as well as meeting new people.
Instagram Challenges
As well as using local hashtags, keep an eye out for Instagram challenges that you’d like to take part in. An Instagram challenge is a list of prompts to encourage you to take a photo a day with a particular theme. Challenges often start on the first of the month, so the Day 1 theme is done on the 1st, Day 2 on the 2nd and so on.
Our Challenge
To encourage all our readers to get to know their city better, we decided to hold our own Instagram Challenge.
Take your camera or your phone, and go for a walk. Perhaps invite someone from your halls or your course, and see if they’d like to get to know the city too.
When I was writing the prompts for our challenge, I wanted to make sure that everyone could take part wherever in the world they are located. The prompts are all open to interpretation – there’s no ‘right’ answer. For example, on Day 1, the prompt is ‘happy’. Some examples of how you could interpret this could be;
• a picture of things that make you happy,
• people in the park being happy,
• a smiley face in some street art
...all would be equally valid and welcome. You can also use the caption to explain a bit more about the photo you’ve taken.
Don’t forget to follow us and tag us in the picture with @studentworld_online and use #SWONovember so that we can find your pictures and share our favourites. You’ll also be able to see some of the other pictures taken around the world. Don’t forget to take a few minutes to like and comment on your favourites. You can find our instagram here.
