Ooh, look at me! I got Hipstamatic! I'm Ansel fucking Adams!

Hipster bloggers, FOR THE LOVE OF PABST BLUE RIBBON, STOP PHOTOGRAPHING EVERYTHING IN HIPSTAMATIC. Sweet tap-dancing flannel revival on an organic wheat cracker. Just fucking STOP. If you want to capture a moment, a landscape, a lazy summer's evening spent around a bonfire, the early morning dew on a plumeria, your toddler nose to nose with your dog as a beam of sunlight falls around them, a swan necking another swan on a still lake, by all means, turn on the Hipstamatic.

But if you want to show what you had for dinner or your three year old's snotty nose or your latest painting or your collection of ceramic frogs or the nasty cut you got from shaving your legs or your new fridge or the damage from the fender bender you caused, STEP AWAY FROM THE HIPSTAMATIC.

You see, one situation is for art and one situation is for reporting facts. I don't see Hipstamatic prints making their way onto the front page of the newspaper (15 DEAD, HUNDREDS WOUNDED IN AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE--and all the photos are run through the Lomo filter for that "dreamlike quality" that enhances the rubble and the body bags).

Nothing makes your secret green bean recipe look less appealing than to run it through a vivid green or cyan filter and then wash the whole damned thing with a few lens flares RIGHT OVER THE BEANS. Yep. Gonna run right on down to Publix to get the ingredients.


And, honestly, a crappy photograph done in Hipstamatic is a crappy Hipstamatic photograph. It doesn't improve the composure one bit. Even when you run it through a filter to wash it out so your palm tree LOOKS LIKE A PALM TREE FROM 1886.

It's auto-tune for pictures. If you start with a Ke$ha, you're still going to have a Ke$ha when you finish...it's just going to be louder, slightly more in tune, and less drunk-sounding.

I'm not saying to cut it out completely. I love using Retro Camera+ and other Android apps like that, but I'm not taking the kids' science project experiments pics with them or showcasing my banana bread or taking insurance pics when someone rear ends me with them.



Remember: It's OK to step away from the digital filters now and then.

To wit:


WHY? FOR GOD'S SAKE. WHY? It's badly framed, badly composed, the filter doesn't complement the natural light, it's angled like my grandmother took it, the subject is barely in the shot, the foreground is distracting, and it's basically an ugly shot. Why in God's name would you think running it through a filter would fix it?


See? It sharpens the natural light to enhance the sunny day, yet it gives that hazy, lazy summer feel to the pic. It's composed better and has interesting subjects.
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Also nice. It ENHANCES the pic, not tries to change it. It plays on the blue of a cool day on the shore and frames its subjects nicely.

Don't be pic number one. Just...just don't be pic number one. At least plunk down the cash for a real Diana or a DIY pinhole if you're going to be pic number one.