Sharing TCC Through Imagery: Fast, Beautiful & Fun

Perhaps you are more visual than a wordsmith? After all, a photo really can be worth a thousand words. In fact, studies show that our brains register information from images much faster than from written pages. And we retain those impressions longer.

What does this have to do with T’ai Chi Chih? In order to grow our community of TCC practitioners, we need to be versed in various, popular forms of communication – like Instagram, which boasts 100 million users. Check out www.instagram.com/taichichih, where you’ll find a growing stream of “instagrammed” TCC photos.

What’s Instagram? Quite simply, it’s a photo-sharing platform. It’s a way to transform photos that will attract and hold the attention of others. And, more importantly, it’s a way to share them with the world with the click of a few buttons. Start by downloading the free Instagram smartphone application from iTunes (for iDevices) or GooglePlay (for Android).

How to Instagram?

1.) Open Instagram on your smartphone and set up an account using the cogwheel in the upper right corner. Link it to Twitter or Facebook for easy sharing/posting. (This is particularly important because sharing exponentially magnifies the reach of TCC.)

2.) To Instagram an image you’ve already taken, press the “camera” icon at the bottom and then choose the left icon. Scroll through your library to select the image for instagramming.

3.) Scale & Crop: Pinch to zoom and/or shift the image to the left or right for the best composition. (This is very important.) Click “Crop” in the upper right.

4a.) Editing: Note the four icons above the 20 primary filter choices (Normal, Amaro, Mayfair, etc…):

a.) Rotate: To reposition your image if necessary.

b.) Frame: To show your border choices – choose black or white, rough- or straight-edged, thick or thin.

c.) Tear Drop: Skip this.

d.) Sun/Moon: To saturate most images.

4b.) Editing: At this point, there are seemingly infinite variables. But luckily, this is a “what you see is what you get” application. No choice is right or wrong – although you’ll probably want something that’s bright and happy rather than stark and foreboding!

5.) Next: After you’ve made your aesthetic decisions, click Next in the upper right corner. Type the name of the movement and type #TaiChiChih and T’ai Chi Chih. (Yes, written both ways and exactly like that.) Share it on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, email it.

6.) Now, about those other four icons along the bottom of the application:

a.) Home: Once you start following others, their images will appear here. Like and/or comment on a photo. Click the three dots on the right to tweet and share it.

b.) Star:

*In the search box for users, type taichichih. Follow us and share our images. *In the search box for hashtag, type #taichichih.

* Let’s flood the ethers with great images of TCC.

c.) Camera: We focused on this in Steps 2-4 above.

d.) Love/Comment: Check out recent activity for users you follow.

e.) Your feed/profile: Self-explanatory. Tip: Claim your own name – as in instagram.com/taichichih.

Voila. Easier done than perhaps said, although hopefully these instructions will save you some time and blind trial-and-error. Have fun and Instagram wisely.