Tuesday 12 November 2013

InstaLife







As if our lives weren't fast enough, now they have to be slick enough. Because now, we need to take a photo of our every move.


It is said, that every picture tells a thousand tales, but if you are living life in 3G times, you can even count the number of stories your picture tells, by counting the likes and comments it reacts!
Over the past year or so,I have been living life through instagram-tinted filters...It seems that every moment in our lives has the potential of being captured and filtered, hash tagged and made "oh-so-cool". Even the most mundane activity, like brushing your teeth, has become an #instamoment. Cool photo-effects, frames and other clever stuff, can make any daily activity/chore/process, appear "interesting". Add a clever caption or two and combine it with some creative "hashtags" to finish up and post the picture successfully. 

Personally, I have always enjoyed taking photographs and I suppose I have my mother to thank (?) for this habit. Her passion for capturing an important moment, a celebration, a vacation, a birthday….from the time me and all my siblings were born, have made each of us fairly immune to the camera.  I used to greatly resent being made to pose for pictures , especially when it would be amidst other kids my age, who would look at me rather curiously whilst I would be correcting my posture or body language for my enthusiastic and loving mom, trying to get a perfect frame. We have cupboards filled with photo albums (the real kind!) of black and white and color photographs dating back to the very beginning of all our lives. Nothing hits the spot better than spending a random Sunday, going through these heavy albums with all the wonderful memories.

When I got my very first camera, my friends would cringe as I would make them do what my mother did to me – get a perfectly art-directed photograph, even if it meant moving people and things around to achieve the right composition! It is no surprise however, how much they would then enjoy seeing their pictures later after they got developed! When we moved from roll to digital, it got a lot easier to take a semi-decent photograph. In the worst case, a bad picture could be deleted and re-shot….

Now, as we have moved from a digital camera to a smart phone, or shall I say, the iPhone (era); every one of us is a photographer. And a superb photographer at that. It is truly as easy as aim-and-shoot, baby! The phone does all the work for you - just make sure to have your #instapose on.

I am guilty of being a dedicated instagrammer. It is a brilliant application and I think it is a lovely way of expressing oneself and sharing one’s life with others. The trouble is, I seem to have moved from dedication to obsession for I can spend time solo, provided I have my phone with me because it feels as good as being with rest of the world!

Not so good for my inter-personal skills however...........

But hey, isn't there that application, called Facebook to take care of that problem?

(So there you have it, humans shall become robots..............this is the #instatruth)




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