Feature Friday by Rise Collaborative
Editor’s note: Each week Buffalo lifestyle brand Rise Collaborative scour Instagram for their favorite locally sourced images. Each Friday we at The Public will feature a few of their favorites, along with a little bit of info from the photographers themselves. To submit your Instagram photo use the hashtag #FFRisePublic.
1.@_shanwoww
“The free concerts in Bidwell Parkway are one of my favorite things about living in the city in the summertime. It’s a great opportunity to experience the local music scene while enjoying a relaxing and beautiful Buffalo summer night with family and friends. Plus—who doesn’t love an excuse to drink wine on a Tuesday?”
@explorerochester
“What originally started as a hashtag on Instagram; Explore Rochester has now evolved into a movement encouraging people to explore and appreciate Rochester in new ways and connect with others that are doing the same. Simply stated, our goal is to connect people to people and people to places. The @explorerochester instagram account shares a different unique perspective of the city, every week. Last week, we partnered with some local businesses to have our second #ROCSTAMEET, which is what we like to call our offline events, where we look to fascilitate community and collaboration. Our first event brought together over 60 people from around Rochester and this one we had nearly 200, meeting first at Pour Coffee Parlor before journeying out to the pier at Charlotte for sunset.”
3. @colin_patrick
“I take a lot of walks with my dog @a_whippet_named_enzo (yes, I have an instagram for my dog) around Buffalo and I usually bring my camera along too. There is nothing specific that I look for—I just snap away at anything that catches my eye. I have strong pride being a Buffalonian and love showcasing our beautiful city in the best light. There are so many hidden gems within Buffalo that are easy to overlook. Growing up in Buffalo all I ever heard was how crappy our city is—waterfront this, waterfront that. Now that real development and change is happening, however small it may be in the scheme of things, I want to be a part of it and document it and love it and promote it and share it.”
4. @ehelios
“This is an image of a set of railroad bridges over the Buffalo River in the vicinity of Red Jacket Park in Buffalo’s Valley neighborhood taken from the seat of my kayak. The one lift bridge has been permanently in the upright position for as long as I’ve been kayaking the river (10 years) and to my eyes it’s an interesting and idiosyncratic part of Buffalo’s skyline. I’ve shot it on many occasions from many vantage points and have always been disappointed with the results. I guess I felt this shot was worthy of posting in part because the square format kind of forced me to focus on the intersection of the two bridges rather than trying to capture the extreme horizontality of the entire bridge and surrounding landscape. It was also fortuitous that a train happened to come by just as I was paddling up to the bridge. I like the curves of the railcar against the lines and angles of the bridge and the white letters on the black car. These seemingly minor and random details help to separate this shot of the bridge from all the others I’ve discarded. Regarding Instagrammers and Buffalo: I think social media in general and Instagram in particular can be hugely influential in raising Buffalo’s profile among potential visitors.
Buffalo is an incredibly beautiful and visually rich landscape, which for many people is a counterintuitive concept that just goes against everything they’ve been lead to believe about our city. Disseminating interesting images of the city and region in all its manifestations (scenics, landscapes, architecture, events, etc.) is an extremely efficient and cost-effective way to create a new narrative about Buffalo. The more evangelists out there posting beautiful/challenging/provocative Buffalo images on Instagram, the sooner we get beyond the stereotypes and cliches that tend to dampen people’s curiosity and inhibit visitation. That said, please use the #buffalove15 hashtag on all your Buffalo pics this year! Visit Buffalo Niagara is planning on producing another short video with Paget Films featuring the best of this year’s images.”