Like many people, I enjoy taking pictures with my phone. I keep an online photo album on Foto. During the summer, I spent a lot of time following photographers on Instagram. Looking back now in early autumn, I can see how much their pictures influenced my subject choices and photo editing at the time.

The industrial sublime and the beauty of the ordinary are both very popular on Instagram. I can easily understand why. There’s a thrill in spotting beautiful shapes and forms in seemingly everyday scenes. It’s a way to enjoy life as well. Why assume that beauty only exists in popular tourist destinations? Why wait for your holiday to recognise it?

Some Instagram photographers also favour an editing style that gives pictures a smooth, glowing sheen. I saw it most often on colour photographs – often used with great results on Americana, such as roadside diner scenes. This look can be achieved in Snapseed by fiddling around with the various tools, including one called “glow.”

You can see these various influences in the photographs in this blog post.

I took the first picture in a village called Parkgate. It shows Black-headed gulls attracted by tourists and their food on the promenade. I’m not sure whether the birds at the back really had such pale heads or whether I overedited the photograph.

The two street scenes below are quick shots taken through a car window. They’re both somewhere on the Wirral Peninsula. The signage and the colours really caught my eye. “Dog happiness” sounds wonderful.

The two photos below show bridges on major roads. As you can see, they’re heavily edited to give them a very glowy look.

Some motorway bridges would make good landscape paintings. I’ve seen several where the bridge, the curve of the road, the surrounding trees, and the colours of nearby lorries combine to create a pleasing scene.

In the picture above and the two below, I liked and still like the repeated shapes.

I’m fond of these photos because they remind me of things I did this year, but I don’t know whether I really like them aesthetically. Taking them was more fun than looking at them is right now.

In my experience, doing anything creative for fun is often like that. The enjoyment of creating something is a completely separate thing from the pleasure that anyone might get from being its audience. I think that’s why so many hobbies are built on creativity. The act of doing brings its own rewards.

Our culture often fails to separate the fun of doing from the utility of the end result. I’m sure many people have been put off writing or making art because they think the final product won’t be good enough, won’t make money, and won’t find an audience. The Millennial pressure to monetise hobbies and a much older tradition of Puritan utilitarianism probably both have an impact here.

I believe the enjoyment of creating something is a tangible and real thing that has value in its own right.