But I can't stop using the in-camera filters.
Damn them and their Instagram, cultural-cringe, pay-for-meaning goodness. Really, it's as though we as a generation can't actually take a photo of anything that has any heart or meaning unless it looks like something our parents would have snapped.
Baby-boom-culture-war arguments aside, it's partly because the photos we all take now are capable of revealing
so, so much. 12 is the megapixel-of-thumb in 2012. Anything less and
you're Facebooking from your Samsung Galaxy. Anything more and you
really should have sold at least a couple of shots to Frankie. Or Nat Geo.
So now we all tread the path of the filter d'fabulos.
Picture of grass?
Stick
it on cross-process and suddenly you're skipping through Halycon Fields
flashing your all access pass to a time when everything that happened
mattered and everything that mattered happened. Meaning rolled like
bushfire across the land, scorching everything with its indelible,
etherial touch. The fire is gone, but the seeds they opened will always
have the flames of Polaroid and Kodachrome to thank and remember for
every particle of light they capture.
Beach shot where no one's actually looking at the camera? I used 'Dramatic Tone' and suddenly everything is significant. It's no longer just a lazy blast from the hip, half an eye on the screen. It's a savage ballet of contrasts, pulling the eternal beach through the starkness of the modern world.
You could blow this picture up to the size of a door and it's resonance wouldn't be lost.
Remove these generation-aping filters though, and you've just got an over-exposed picture of a child not looking at the camera.
At least I'm giving it a shot.
Yes you are. And they're brilliant, techno wizardry or fluke or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteIf post processing filter's fail you, there's always copy paste 'shopping.
ReplyDeleteOh god, apostrophe catastrophe. I hang my head in shame.
ReplyDeleteI do like the last one the best. He's not looking at the storm either.
ReplyDeleteHaha, funny Dan.
I like the grass in the first one, it's pretty sharp! Would be curious to see a version without the filter.
I guess I'm more for realism, however boring it may seem to be. I do like your blurbs though.
I used to buy and enjoy Frankie for a while, but there's only so much self-aware dreamy earthy crafty forest animal stuff even I can handle.
P.S. You should change the timezone of your blog. I keep thinking you get up super early, and I can't seem to make the conversion in my head.
Kath - 'Brilliant' might be upping the flash filter on the comments section, but thank you.
ReplyDeleteDan - The fact that Charlie was having a tantrum in that shot makes your picture come alive.
Looki - The non-filter version was all washed out plus I was making sure that Charlie didn't fill his shoes with too much sand. That kind reduces set up time somewhat.
Timezone - on the To Do List!
filter schmilter...I like my photos just as I take them, they're more real to me that way.
ReplyDelete