a photo blog about everyday life
We took a little trip to Toronto for a wedding this weekend and I busied myself making Instagrams along the way.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
How to make a fake Instagram in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: Select an old photo, preferably one that has a great deal of
sentimental value to you.
Step 2: Scan the photo
Step 3: Crop it into a square.
Voila! Your fake Instagram is complete! Put it on facebook and email it to all your friends.
Please note: It’s very possible your old photo is already square in shape. If this is the case, skip step 3.
I was very disappointed when Instagram went down (Crashed) during my trip to Omaha. It happened right after the fireworks display at my aunt’s 90th birthday party. Omaha is such a great city and I was really looking forward to trying to capture, as closely as possible, something resembling the romanticized images of my home town that appear sometimes in my dreams. I often joke to my friends in Buffalo that Omaha is a perfect, wonderful, far off land that they should visit as soon as possible. Here are 4 more shots I was able to take prior to and immediately following the crash, before heading back to Buffalo. Venues pictured include, Film Streams, Homer’s Records, Fireworks at Ponca Hills Farm, Caffeine Dreams.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
– Anais Nin
I had a wonderful time back home in Omaha for a long weekend that started on Thursday. It was magical for a number of reasons – not including the usual. Sometimes the unexpected is the biggest gift of all. A highlight was the occasion of my Great Aunt Ann’s 90th birthday which was marked by a fabulous party and fireworks show at Ponca Hills Farm. I captured this Instagram shot shortly before the great Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram crash of 2012.
Although I had fun playing with the Instagram ap on my iPhone during my recent UK trip, I have to admit feeling slightly apprehensive about taking the phenomenon too seriously within artistic practice. Aesthetically speaking, Instagram and it’s predecessor, Hipstamatic, seem to follow in the footsteps of the Lomo, the analog camera with numerous incarnations at the center of the Lomographic Society, which professes a motto of “Don’t think, just shoot.”
Unlike the Lomo however, Instagram produces digital images well suited for social media platforms whose users demand instant gratification. It’s easy to take a shot, apply jazzy, retro-looking filters and share the results over a variety of social networking services in seconds flat.
A recent New Yorker article has this to say about the Instagram phenomenon:
“Instagram’s “Most Popular” feed is filled with sunsets over cities and beaches and points in between. It might be said, though, that all Instagrammed photos emphasize photography as an elegiac or twilight art, one that rushes and fakes the emotion of old photographs by cutting out the wait for history entirely, and giving something just a few seconds old the texture of time. We are creating a kind of instant nostalgia for moments that never quite were.”