BENGALURU: A year and a half ago, a Bengalurean landed a job thanks to his posts on micro-blogging site Instagram. 23-year-old Supratim Bhattacharya now travels across the country for Untitled Arts Foundation, which works towards creative development of children, as their documentation photographer.
He was at a meetup for Instagrammers at Cubbon Park, as part of the Bangalore edition of 16th Worldwide InstaMeet this Sunday. All smiles, Supratim said, "I took a flight and stayed in a five-star hotel room for the first time in my life last year."
He had started by shooting events on his mobile phones. After the Foundation took an interest in his work, they rented a camera and asked him to shoot a training programme; soon Supratim was on their rolls, working from their office in JP Nagar.
The theme for this weekend’s meet was 'kind comments'. On account of World Suicide Prevention Day, several city’s Instagrammers clicked pictures, painted, made doodles and wrote letters for people who inspire them or for those they want to inspire. Interested were also invited to send mails or post on their accounts, tagging their friends with hashtag #wwwIam16CubbonPark or #kindcomments.
A spoken word poet had brought his Italian Olivetti Letter 922 typewriter to write some poems dedicating to his friends. 23-year-old Aditya Mankad said, "When I get a prompt from someone, I type a poem and post it to them. I am now writing one on stars." As a part of Instameet, he has written 15 poems on love, loneliness, friendships and stars.
A group of art students Hema M Shastry, Mohit Mahato and Shraddha Bhagat wrote kind words, to post along with goodies, for friends they made through Instagram. Hema said, "We are posting about 20 mails to our friends across the globe."
Technical writer Sudeep Nandurkar is part of the Weekly Hashtag Project (WHP) in which members click pictures to a given theme and post them. "When the theme was nightlife, I was one of the nine entries from across the world, whose pictures were posted on the site," says the 36-year-old.
The Instagram also has a helpline for people suffering from depression or suicidal tendencies. If a person sees a suspicious post, he can report it anonymously.