So...Instagram...yeah, side effect of the new iPhone 7

Despite having written a post about Instagram (actually, two, well four) back when a mere 100 million or so people had already discovered the app (so cutting edge), I never bothered to use it. So there goes my chance at life as an "Instagram influencer."

Instead, because I'm really bad at monetization, I spent my Instagram-related energy on writing an  article about the horror movie Sinister and the Instagram aesthetic, and doing a book chapter about the Brownie camera and its relation to Instagram. But use it? No way. Pinterest was all the social media I could handle. But then I got the iPhone 7plus and thought, sure, six years late to the party, perfect. Fashionably late.

So...try not to be jealous, but I have, like, 45 followers, so that basically puts me in Kardashian territory. See, just look at this screenshot:

Taylor Swift is no doubt nervous about my meteoric rise. It's what people are saying. So I hear.

Should you want to follow takeoutphoto on Instagram, go for it. It exists. It's my really lazy way of sort of blogging. Even lazier than tumblr.

I've had a sudden nostalgic resurgence of interest in glitch (see my "Glitch Gothic" chapter in Cinematic Ghosts if you're into that kind of thing). I'm going back through my files from 2009 that were destroyed/hopelessly corrupted by an overconfident IT guy. Thanks, bruh. Out of devastation (and it was pretty devastating at the time to lose both my hard drive and backup) comes the beauty of digital ruins. Sometimes, the pure glitch is beautiful on its own, and sometimes I help it by combining it with black and white. Here's one I did tonight:

(and I put more up for sale on my smugmug site as I do them)

Here's one of my favorites:

But what does this have to do with the new iPhone? Nothing. I started Instagram because I got the cool dual lens iPhone 7 plus, which has a camera good enough to take real pictures with. And instead, I end up working on more photos that I did not take on an iPhone. Go figure. Then, in turn, it put me in the mood to write this blog post. Maybe more...it could happen.

But if it doesn't, hey, there's always my Instagram account.

Youtube video on creating "Early Bird" Instagram effect

I always like watching how other people use Photoshop because there are so many different ways to achieve the same effect. In this tutorial, for example, I might have used curves more, not that it matters. If you decide to replicate the results, I highly recommend creating an action so you don't have to go through all those steps the next time you want to create the effect.

Much ado about Instagram, part 2

Source: quickmeme.com via Manuel on Pinterest

I've been cloistered away in academic hell finishing a chapter about the Brownie camera for a book about design icons, which is exactly what got me thinking about Instagram in the first place. I had read a post on A Photo Editor called "Instagram Joins The Brownie As The Next Great Photography Disruptor." Naturally, I was intrigued. Turns out, his post didn't really talk about the Brownie, but it did get me thinking. How is the camera that brought snapshot photography to the masses similar to Instagram? I left my first reaction thoughts in this comment:

The Brownie made photography affordable ($1 vs. $25 for a “real Kodak”) and was initially marketed to children (Eastman was surprised at the number of adults buying the camera for themselves, and shifted marketing accordingly). Eastman had hoped to use the Brownie as a gateway drug to the more expensive Kodak line. For most people who are interested enough in photography to be reading this site, using Instagram would be like stepping down from Kodak to Brownie. But for all those Instagram users, it might follow the “Plant the Brownie Acorn and the Kodak Oak Will Grow” pattern: the Instagram user might move on to film or Photoshop. A big difference, however, is that if Instagram proves to be a “gateway drug” for higher end photography, then it’s a gateway that leads away from Instagram.

It would be a stretch to claim that there were some kind of direct bloodline from the origins of snapshot photography to Instagram. Even the "disruptor" narrative has its limits. Still, we have to organize thought somehow, so for the sake of comparison, let's look at the problems Eastman was trying to solve and the problems Systrom wanted to solve (knowing full well that it's all really about money).

Eastman wanted to sell film, and the best way to do that was to create a market for it. His big breakthrough was the Kodak camera in 1888. For $25 (still a luxury item price range), people with no skill in processing could get a camera pre-loaded with 100 exposures of Kodak film, take the photos (literally, it was point and shoot—not even a viewfinder to look through), and then ship the whole camera back to Rochester, New York for processing. In about a week, you'd get your prints and your camera back with a new roll of film—all for $10 (still, not cheap). Eastman completely took away the technical burden of processing.

In 1900, Eastman introduced the Brownie camera for only $1 (about the price of a men's shirt). It only came loaded with 6 exposures, and you had to load your own film, but it was all simple enough that he  marketed it to kids. While the Kodak sold 5,000 in the first nine months, the Brownie sold 150,000 in the first year alone, and it just kept going from there. I won't go into detail here, but let's just say that Eastman solved his problem. He dominated the worldwide film market, made people think about their lives in terms of "Kodak moments," and thoroughly democratized photography. Mission accomplished.

Now on to Instagram...

According to co-founder, Kevin Systrom (you can view the whole video at the bottom of this post), they set out to solve 3 problems:

1. cell phone photos were "uninspiring"

2. people wanted to share their photos

3. it took "an eternity" to upload photos

They did their homework and discovered that the top 10 free photo apps were all "filter" apps.
"I guarantee you, every single person that signed up for Instagram on that first day thought it was a filter app, and that's it," remarks Systrom. But the "filter" aspect (which I talked about in part 1) is not what it was really about, and it's certainly not why Facebook paid 1 billion dollars to acquire Instagram. It's really all about sharing photos. I'm not on Instagram (yet) so I can't speak from experience, but to hear Systrom speak about it, you would think you were about to embark on the "It's A Small World" ride at Disneyland. He calls it "one of the first  truly international social networks" because the means of communication is visual rather than verbal:

"Imagine a service that collects all of the visual data that gets produced all around the world, so that you can tune in to any place on earth and see exactly what's happening. What happens in the world when you take all of that data and combine it in a visual network? [...]It's a universal media that allows you to explore the world, and that's something that the world has been asking for for a long time."

Wow! Talk about having a grand vision! Is that what the world has been asking for? A service that collects all of the visual data in the world and let's anyone tune in to anywhere? And here I thought it was just about making your crappy cell phone photos look like crappy film photos.  Michel Foucault is no doubt looking down from that great panopticon in the sky, shaking his head slowly side to side, and saying "I knew it! Don't say I didn't warn you!" (or rather, Je le savais! Ne dites pas que je ne vous avais pas avertis! No one speaks English in heaven. ;) )

Much ado about Instagram, part 1

Source: acid-sky.tumblr.com via Clodiney on Pinterest

Ever since Facebook spent 1 billion to acquire Instagram, it seems everyone must do a post on it. I'm pretty sure that if you have a photoblog and don't do an Instagram post, then you are automatically chosen to represent your district in the reaping. Since my archery skills aren't what they were at my 12th birthday party, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a post.

First, a disclaimer: I have actually never used Instagram, so my knowledge of it comes from reading, from Pinterest, and from Shep, who cuts my hair.

So, what is Instagram? kidding. sort of.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's two things: 1. a free app to make your crappy cell phone photos look vintagey and 2. a visually-based social network

A lot of people I have read tend to focus only on the first part, and here's the gist of what they say:
Instagram gives digital photos the look of analog photos, often exaggerating flaws such as lens aberrations, fading, and color casts because either:

a ) We live in a soulless digital world, walking among the decades-old ruins we inherited from poststructuralist theorists, eviscerated of every last shred of analog "authenticity." Those tortured, yellowed pixels are the visual manifestation of our 21st century mal du siècle. 

OR 

b )  We "filter" our lives, so Instagram helps us enact some sort of "meta-commentary" by adopting a set of aesthetic commonplaces for various declensions of nostalgia. According to the Atlantic, for example, the Nashville filter is for "ironic nostalgia," the 1977 filter is for "in-your-face nostalgia" and the Lord Kelvin filter is for "actual nostalgia."

OR simply, 

c ) Cell phone photos are by nature ugly, and Instagram helps them look cool. 

One of the problems with choice "a" is that it tends to ignore the long history of nostalgia. We didn't suddenly get nostalgic when computers were invented. Trust me, I'm restraining myself from giving the entire history of nostalgia here. I spent 5 years putting together an exhibit called "Nostalgia & Technology" and I'm writing a book on the topic that deals with everything from sewing machines to cell phones (if you're inclined to read academic stuff, feel free to check out my article in the Journal of Popular Culture. It's fairly readable, considering the genre.) But where was I? Oh yeah, the problem of assuming that we suddenly got nostalgic. Did anyone out there see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris? (If you didn't, you should, it's very charming). Was I the only one who was not shocked to learn that someone in the roaring twenties might think that the belle époque was better (and so on, into the past)? We love past-ness. Choice "a" only gets interesting when you get into specifics—you know, compare/contrast with all of the other historical examples of nostalgia.

Choice "b" ventures even more into academic territory, and I have to admit that I would love to read someone who has really developed that "take" on it. In her Buzzfeed article (my favorite so far), Amanda Petrusich starts to go there. When people get into "meta" this and "meta" that, there's always the danger of completely losing your audience, or coming across as pretentious, or looking like a grad student who just deciphered Frederic Jameson's obscurantist prose for the first time.

Choice "c" is what most people, including Instagram (co)founder Kevin Systrom. In part 2 (next time), I'll get into some of the things I learned from watching the 46 minute interview on Youtube. Until then, check out Stuff Instagramers Say:

Not-Instagram photos from Boston

As a photoblogger, I feel like I should have immediately jumped on the media circus train about Facebook's billion dollar deal (or $1.23 billion) to acquire Instagram. I've never used Instagram, so I'm not even sure how it works as far as the social network part goes, but like most people, I am well acquainted with that faux-vintage Instagram look. More often than not, serious photographers roll their eyes at it (one comment I read called it "kitsch at the push of a button"), but when I was going through some of my Boston photos late last night, I decided to cook up my own Instagram-inspired recipe which will no doubt horrify purists. So, for tonight, here are some scenes from the little bit of time I was able to wander around Boston. Next time, some thoughts on Instagram's place in the history of snapshot photography.

Shameless self-promo: see anything you've got to have? buy it here.