"A good image is created in a state of grace, the late photographer Sergio Larrain said. I remember looking at the image on Photoshop when I got home and realizing grace was underexposed and then adding a vignette and stripping out all the color and cranking up the contrast to make grace presentable. It was the perfect moment but not the perfect photograph. Grace needed fakery to become graceful...
you no longer need high-altitude software like Photoshop like I did, no longer need expensive hardware to crash photography’s beauty party. This is the final stage of a revolution, the democratization of what used to be professional photography, and its hippest, most boring propagandists use Hipstamatic and Instagram."
stumbled upon this intriguing essay a few days ago. having been absent from facebook, twitter and instagram in the past 40+ days, it made me question, "what the heck are we doing with these tools?" do they really make the images better? does this filter help to truly capture the essence of this moment?~matt pearce, "shoot hip or die"
even though i haven't looked at my account in a while, one thing i know: i can't say i'm really proud of any photos i've taken via instagram. in fact, i might say that i'm more ashamed of the uncensored banality of most of the photos i have posted. was it necessary to take a photo of my breakfast, stylize it with the valencia filter and share it with fifty of my friends? no, not at all.
i do think it's possible for cell phone photography can be art, but i'm starting to realize that maybe instagram and the like are not my ideal tools for visual storytelling.
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