Instagram, the Devil, and You.

[notraces]

... relatively young people eh?

thanks, stewart 🙂

 

[CaptZoom]

Every new anti-Instagram article I read sounds more shrill and frightened. It is what it is - democratized digital processing presets combined with a social network - and you can create beauty with it or post tacky photos of your nail art. It's down to taste, skill, and care, just like everything else. If I had a penny for every amateur photographer who uses Tri-X and a mechanical camera as an affectation to dress up their mundane photos...

I will say that Instagram has affected my own photography more than any equipment I've bought in the past couple of years, in that it's taught me how to make subjects personal to me - and the ongoing relations between my photos - relevant to others.

This about covers it.

 

[CaptZoom]

Sure there's a lot of crap photos out there now, but there are a lot gems too. I don't use Instagram; I already do a lot if post processing work (earn a living as a photographer) and I just don't want to do it on my phone. If there was a random setting (the way Hipstamatic does), I'd use it. And let's not forget that in the sea of Instagrammed photos, great photos taken without filters really shine.

 

[sepiareverb]

Still don't get why anybody needs to get all worked up about something they're not being forced to:

a) look at

or

b) use themselves.

Oh right. Those teenage girls, old fellas, strippers and hipsters with IG accounts and a tumblr are a real threat since so many more people like their pictures than like yours...

 

[Exdsc]

Seriously do you really think black and white film or Kodachrome is more "authentic" than Instagram?

I was not implying that Instagram and other similar apps were programmed with a malicious intent to kill the past of color photography. In truth, the love for the past of photography and the demand from users resulted in these apps being created.

The consequences of being too much in love with the past of photography and in fact a sort of morbid obsession with recreating the "look" of films such as Kodachrome has resulted in the whole legacy of color photography being made irrelevant to uninitiated and of course the new generation and generations to come.


In the end Instagram and similar vintage-aesthetic generating apps are inauthentic because they have made the source of their imitation irrelevant by mass scale reproduction and click of a button convenience. if the source is made irrelevant then the cheap imitation is worthless.


B&W is also not safe, Silver Efex is the instagram of B&W, but what b&w has going for itself is its legacy of content-driven photography where irrespective of any digital sexing up, if there is no content in a b&w image, its worthless. And by content I mean subject interest, the classic human condition photography, concerned photography, photography that is mostly about something more than the medium itself.

 

[CaptZoom]

The consequences of being too much in love with the past of photography and in fact a sort of morbid obsession with recreating the "look" of films such as Kodachrome has resulted in the whole legacy of color photography being made irrelevant to uninitiated and of course the new generation and generations to come.

In the end Instagram and similar vintage-aesthetic generating apps are inauthentic because they have made the source of their imitation irrelevant by mass scale reproduction and click of a button convenience. if the source is made irrelevant then the cheap imitation is worthless.

I disagree with your premise (the first paragraph quoted). New methods of creating art do not make old methods irrelevant. They do not undo the achievements of the past. Take painting as an example. Before the industrial revolution, painters could not paint at odd locations, ie scenery. There was no convenient method for transporting paint. The painter would go to the location, make a sketch. The painting would be done at the studio using the sketch(es) and the painter's memory. With metal tubes becoming easily accessible, newer generation of painters had the advantage if taking their paints on location. Did that make the older painters and their achievements irrelevant?

 

[DRabbit]

...
If you are grasping at "authenticity" I think you are playing a losing game.
Art, artificial, artifice...

Browsing through this post just reading everyone's thoughts and this struck me as really funny.

I took a photo of the exact same building, on film no less, self-developed in my bathroom. LOL

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Oh right. Those teenage girls, old fellas, strippers and hipsters with IG accounts and a tumblr are a real threat since so many more people like their pictures than like yours...

I'm doing a Christmas sale on *HUGE* codpieces, with a fitted drawer for the Leica mp only. Do you think there's a demand for a Leica M9 version?

😀

 

[DougFord]

I'm doing a Christmas sale on *HUGE* codpieces, with a fitted drawer for the Leica mp only. Do you think there's a demand for a Leica M9 version?

😀

...a half dozen for me and me droogs, such large yarbles have we. We're off to indulge in a bit of the ol'ultra-violence... Instagram *******s!

 

[35photo]

Ready for a big laugh....well here you go...

http://www.cultofmac.com/204394/thi...oys-instagram-with-absolute-perfection-video/

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Ready for a big laugh....well here you go...

I rather enjoyed that! 😀

 

[Roger Hicks]

...a half dozen for me and me droogs, such large yarbles have we. We're off to indulge in a bit of the ol'ultra-violence... Instagram *******s!

Thou speakest truth, my brother. Real horrorshow!

Cheers,

R.

 

[Nescio]

Ready for a big laugh....well here you go...

http://www.cultofmac.com/204394/thi...oys-instagram-with-absolute-perfection-video/

This is just the obvious, easy to critisize part of it. Personally, I think there's a lot more behind it, and not only to be simply critisized, but I'm still chewing on it.

"Instagram's purpose is to provide an excuse for people without any semblance of taste to spew their own bohemian delusions on the people they went to school with."

See: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/i-dont-get-instagram

Another article that gets stuck on the themes discussed before in this thread.

IG as such is not about memories or about artistic pretensions. As a medium it is nothing more than that: a medium. And as a medium it is all too often confused with the message. That's exactly where the problem of most discussions on it resides. Perhaps McLuhan was right in his time, but he isn't anymore. His famous phrase is nothing more than a time related diagnosis. Now that the medium-message equation has somehow been unconsciously picked up by the masses, the message part of it starts suffering the consequences of obesity and thus has become more and more irrelevant.

Also, I somehow feel that the representation of a moment in time, a moment that already has become part of the past at the very instant it was taken, let alone when published, is NOT what's most important in social photo media. I suspect that the very action of taking a photo is much more important than its actual representation. Haven’t we all witnessed scenes like a dinner party where everybody got up to smile and embrace each other at the moment a picture is taken? That doesn’t happen for the sake of remembrance. It happens as part of the experience that any dinner party must be and the emphasis doesn’t lie on capturing the moment, but on the moment itself. Sharing that moment on social media has nothing to do with the past, but perhaps a lot with projecting an image of the present of the poster (look how XXX I am/we are).

Again, it seems that the perception of photography – as represented in social media, but probably also in the press – is shifting from a documentary, descriptive point of view towards a more immediate and emotional attitude. Don’t know if I’m expressing myself good enough, as all this has more than 50 shades of grey, which is much more complicated than the zone system.

As I said, still chewing on it... Digestion comes afterwards and finally, well it has to come out somewhere, somehow...

Nescio

 

[CaptZoom]

This is just the obvious, easy to critisize part of it. Personally, I think there's a lot more behind it, and not only to be simply critisized, but I'm still chewing on it.

Another article that gets stuck on the themes discussed before in this thread.

IG as such is not about memories or about artistic pretensions. As a medium it is nothing more than that: a medium. And as a medium it is all too often confused with the message. That's exactly where the problem of most discussions on it resides. Perhaps McLuhan was right in his time, but he isn't anymore. His famous phrase is nothing more than a time related diagnosis. Now that the medium-message equation has somehow been unconsciously picked up by the masses, the message part of it starts suffering the consequences of obesity and thus has become more and more irrelevant.

Also, I somehow feel that the representation of a moment in time, a moment that already has become part of the past at the very instant it was taken, let alone when published, is NOT what's most important in social photo media. I suspect that the very action of taking a photo is much more important than its actual representation. Haven’t we all witnessed scenes like a dinner party where everybody got up to smile and embrace each other at the moment a picture is taken? That doesn’t happen for the sake of remembrance. It happens as part of the experience that any dinner party must be and the emphasis doesn’t lie on capturing the moment, but on the moment itself. Sharing that moment on social media has nothing to do with the past, but perhaps a lot with projecting an image of the present of the poster (look how XXX I am/we are).

Again, it seems that the perception of photography – as represented in social media, but probably also in the press – is shifting from a documentary, descriptive point of view towards a more immediate and emotional attitude. Don’t know if I’m expressing myself good enough, as all this has more than 50 shades of grey, which is much more complicated than the zone system.

As I said, still chewing on it... Digestion comes afterwards and finally, well it has to come out somewhere, somehow...

Nescio

Message received.