ABSTRACT

When Ming visited the new café in Shanghai's Yongpu distinct, her first instinct was to photograph it. Ming was aware how her uptake of the locationbased service (LBS) game Jiepang made her take and share more spontaneous pictures of the places she had visited. Whilst not part of the game play, Ming felt a desire to add photos was motivated by a need to share with friends as well as creating visual journal entries. She had a plethora of choices about the types of lenses and filters she could use on her iPhone. In particular, she had begun to regularly use Instagram. She liked the way it had so many options for her to customise and edit her pictures, often rendering banal and plain images into beautiful photos. Instagram made it easy for her to edit and upload her pictures quickly. She found that her friends would often comment, saying how beautiful the place looked or how delicious the food was. Ming enjoyed these comments and often also commented on her friends' pictures. It was a nice way to stay in perpetual contact when face-to-face wasn't an option.