Guess What? It’s My SIX YEAR Bookstagram Anniversary!!
Yes!!! That’s right!! I’ve been on Bookstagram for six whole years. Okay yes, I know this is the blog and not Bookstagram. But since BG was my first platform for books, I wanted to talk about it a bit here. The community (and platform) has changed a lot since I started, but I still love it so much. I don’t often look back at my old photos, but JUST FOR YOU GUYS I’ll show a little feed evolution of my account. Also I guess I should link my account for you LOL so here it is!
I first found out about the BG community via Buzzfeed, if you can believe it. It was this article, about Emily who runs the account @blueeyedbiblio. I’ve been a reader my whole life, but had no idea before this that people actually talked about books online?? For a few months I lurked on Instagram and checked out the community, and then in summer of 2015 I finally decided to join. It was definitely one of my better decisions haha. Over the past 6 years I’ve made so many great friends and discovered a ton of INCREDIBLE books.
I think I’m one of the few who has never changed their username. Mine is “bookish_black_hole”. It came about because I study astrophysics, and I wanted something book related. So I just mashed the two together hahaha. Not super clever, but I’m super attached to it at this point and wouldn’t want to change it.
Obviously the “main” part of BG is the actual photos, since Instagram is a photo platform (for now…). So I thought I’d take you through a little feed evolution! Since I’ve been doing it so long, I bet a lot of you haven’t seen my earlier photos and photo styles.
Photo/feed evolution!
During my lurking on BG I tried to figure out what kind of photo style would work for me. At that time, a lot of people were doing photos with white backgrounds, so I was like hey why not. Seems like a good place to start! I started pretty simple, as you can see. Just some books and whatever I had laying around the house.
I then got more into photos with more props. I saw them everywhere and wanted to get in on the fun. The props I used were still things that I had around the house though, I didn’t go out and buy specific things just to be props. Luckily my family had a lot of cool things that made for fun photos haha.
I don’t know why I got into a matchstick phase haha. I assume that I saw it in someone else’s photo, but it’s been so long that I can’t remember. It was really fun to do though! You can also see that this is when I started buying a few Funko Pops. It was also when I started watermarking my photos, as photo stealers were starting to run rampant.
Here I started to edit my photos a lot more with filters, to try to get a cooler white tone in them. You can also see my fake flowers, which I bought specifically for BG photos haha. My first dedicated props!
Dang I miss doing these kinds of photos. Elaborate designs using pretty much just books – towers and circles and etc. Maybe I should try doing it again! Though the tall ones require a white wall haha. But yeah, these were a lot of work – obviously. Super fun to make though, and to come up with different designs. And it was fun to get the towers to balance correctly haha. I also kept tweaking the white balance, it wasn’t quite where I wanted it yet.
After lots of tweaks I eventually found my style, which is the style I use today. It’s been a while since I found it (some number of years), and I love it. I’m so happy with how the white tones look, and I focus on bright pops of color – mainly from the books. I don’t use many props other than my fake flowers. I try to highlight the books themselves, and keep it simple. I’ve tried a few different things with my iPad, like putting writing and little drawings on some photos. It’s been fun to try new things! I don’t see myself changing this theme up too much since I’m very happy.
One other different thing I’ve tried is outdoor photos! Since I really like the white, I really only do it when there’s snow – which isn’t often haha. So enjoy these few outdoor shots! And there are more on my BG of course if you want to see more.
What has Bookstagram given me?
I could talk for a long time about all the positive things that I’ve gained from being a part of the BG community. I’ll try to keep it short haha. One obvious thing is the community, since naturally I’m not just shouting into the void but rather interacting with so many other bookstagrammers. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve mad a lot of friends – like actual really good close friends. And friends from all over the world! Which is awesome, but also sucks since I can’t just see them all whenever I want haha. But I have been lucky enough to meet up with a good number of my BG friends in person. We’ve gone to bookstores, gotten food, gone to book events, and more!
I’ve made a Discord group with a subset of friends as well, and we chat about anything and everything. That’s the group where we created The Happy Place 5! We also watch a lot of movies and tv together – thank you Netflix Party lol. I’m so grateful to have had them through the pandemic especially.
Another thing I’ve gotten is….more books. HAHAHA by that I mean I’ve gotten some wonderful book recs, and for things that I may have never found on my own! And some of them have definitely turned out to be favorites of mine. I love seeing people rave about their favorite books, it’s just happy to see other people so enthusiastic about things, and it also helps me with recs haha.
There are also a lot of folks on BG who take the time to educate others about various important issues. To list a few, disability advocacy , LGBTQIA+ rights, Black Lives Matter, the situation in Palestine, indigenous rights, and so many other things that I don’t have time to list. But I really appreciate those who take the time to share resources and teach the rest of us who want to learn. It has definitely changed me as a person, and spurred me to learn much much more about these topics. Not that I wasn’t involved in them before, but in any case, being an ally is an active state of being and something you need to be constantly working on.
The future??
Of course over six years I’ve seen a lot of people join and leave the community. So far, I’m still having a great time on BG, and I have the time to do it, so I have no plans on leaving!! I’m gonna stay until I am truly a bookstagram ancient hahaha. Though I feel like one already, since there are so few people from around when I started.
So that’s a little bit about my bookstagram journey!! I hope you enjoyed seeing and hearing about it, even if you aren’t on bookstagram yourself.
Are you on BG? Do we follow each other? Come say hi to me on there!
This is such a lovely post, it’s such a beautiful way to look back at ones evolution through the years on Bookstagram, the different genres and themes and editing styles that are so uniquely that person. Very nostalgic and I would love to see more of these in the future!
sorry for the super late reply, but thank you SO much for reading it and for all of the kind words!!