Insta-rant

I like to think of myself as an even-tempered woman. There are few things* that will rustle my jimmies enough to get a rant out of me. Instagram is one of them. It’s simple, really: good pictures don’t need a filter and bad pictures don’t need to exist.

Why do we take photographs? To capture and commemorate sights and moments we experience, of course. It stands to reason that those sights and moments would hold some sort of personal significance or possess some special artistic quality. It would appear that Instagram users are absolved of such excessive use of common sense when uploading their pictures. Every other post is someone’s lunch, coffee, or pet. While not necessarily ugly, just the fact that they are yours does not justify broadcasting them on the public forum of the internet.  Your panini is well-toasted. Your barista can draw a leaf on your latte.  Your life must be fraught with thrills.

But fine, I’ll be fair. This epidemic of mundane picture-taking is not unique to Instagram. I’ve succumbed to it on occasion too. The really inexcusable bit is the self-satisfaction people seem to get from “Instagramming” their photos and choosing the right filter and accompanying caption. The entire arts of photography and digital editing, among others, are dedicated to explore and extend the ways we capture and convey ideas and emotion through images. They are the reflection of years of brilliant study and expression of hundreds of people past and undoubtedly of other hundreds to come.  The entire Impressionist movement revolved around expressing the essence ordinary subjects and still doesn’t cover everything. Yet, somehow, we act as if we can encapsulate the entire range of human emotion through one of twenty pre-canned Instagram filters. Now every John or Jane with a smartphone can upload a picture of something pretty commonplace, apply some shade or other of blurry nostalgia, add a tumblr-wise caption to it of the “Live-Laugh-Love” persuasion, and achieve a sense of gratification from appearing “interesting” or “artsy” in front of friends. That’s a billion Instagram users retroactively redefining their captured moments through the lenses of whatever colour saturation suits their fancy that day.  It defies the whole point of photography! It’s a sham, and a shame.

Let it not be said that I cannot give credit where it’s due. There are plenty of people that use Instagram and other apps like it well: interesting subject matter, appealing photo composition, whatever else makes a picture beautiful. But they are definitely the minority. The path of least resistance is photographed with the gratuitous use of “Sierra” and “Nashville.”

End of rant,

KRP

*Other such sore points include, but are not limited to: Haagen Dazs being an American company, the entire premise of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and excessively cynical people 😉