[Bimmer84]

This thread took an awesome turn when he posted his point and shoot photos.

[Stohlen]

^ And thats what I dont understand. I don't get why a normal photograph is so much less appealing to everyone than something thats been filtered and photoshopped beyond normal recognition.

[Bimmer84]

Because you called yourself an avid and educated photographer (as I am also), yet post simple point and shoot examples that literally anyone with a camera could have done. I'm not saying instagram photos are cooler than yours, I am just saying your photos didn't exactly help your argument. I went to college for graphic design and photography, but I like instagram for some quick on the go photos to post. Instagram is not only for filters, it is also a social sub community of people that share photos. We are not all 14 year old girls posting OMG! stuff. Hope that helps a bit.

For example, I documented a big part of my Amsterdam trip through instagram. I posted a bunch of pictures of the Heineken factory and stuff like that as I was touring it. Not something I would have been able to do with a DSLR. It's like an online scrapbook. You aren't always going to have your nice camera with you.

[import36]

Originally Posted by Bimmer84

This thread took an awesome turn when he posted his point and shoot photos.

+1

[Stohlen]

Yes avid means do it alot, and educated means took corses to teach how to take them properly, none of that equals a professional photographer so dont use that as your expectation of me. I know what a good photo is and I know what a poor photo is, I am by no means great at photography, but I do believe I have a valid point with instagram.

And i'm not at all refering to photos used for documentation and recreational photography, i'm refering to photos like these:







Where people just filter for the sake of filtering and ruin a perfectly good photo because its "cool"

[Bimmer84]

I personally think the two photos I posted came out well and both were taken using my cell phone and filtered on instagram. You are always going to like your photos more than the next guy.

[Stohlen]

Oh and I completely agree with you, your photos were traditional and showed the subject in its true light, how it really looks in an artistic or unique way.

[Bimmer84]

All of the photos you posted just now are terrible, so yes I agree to the overuse of filters. Although, the overextreme HDR at the end looks kind of neat.

[Hawkeye]

Personally, I think the last one was not blurry enough.

As for the instagram photos I agree 95% of the time, but the last instagram one you posted actually looks pretty awesome IMO.

[stopper]

I'm not going to put a dog in this fight one way or the other (regarding the OP and his glass house), but I will say this:

As an actual part-time photographing enthusiast (read: paid for my work), the single biggest Instagram pet peeve of mine...beyond all the vignetting, old-film yellowing, and hdr over-processing...is the rampant, and hilarious, misuse of the tilt-shift DOF filter by people who clearly have no idea how the actual native, analog lens effect is intended to be used. This would be the 2nd of the 5 pictures that Stohlen just posted.

People just throw it on their photos, like blurring the top and bottom of a photo is just going to automatically make sense. It ends up just being a visual contradiction for your eyes because that's not how things should focus, and outs it as a clearly mis-applied filter.

The intended effect is to force and manipulate a very shallow depth-of-field to be in focus, which has the effect of miniaturizing the captured image. It does this because we typically only ever naturally see such effects from macro photography of the very small, so our mind is tricked into miniaturizing something as large at a sports stadium or city block. This effect can be awesome, but it needs to be utilized properly, and that not only means focusing the right subject matter at the right angle in the composition, but also only using it with a photo that has enough depth in it to make any sense in the first place. (It also has architectural photo purposes, but that's not important right now).

These would be some good usages of the effect (apologies to the original artists, don't know who they are to give credit):

Edit: eesh, sorry for being so long-winded; got a bit carried away there. I guess I don't have many other outlets for my Instagram PSA. I'll get off my podium now.

[bosstones]

I'm not fond of a lot of the instagram photo's I've seen either, but, like car mods, to each their own. Everyone has their own taste in how their pix look and some like being able to tweak what they did on they fly w/o any real post-processing know how or SW, maybe because its new to them. As with photographers and post-processing, effects done wrong can look like crap, too. I'm no expert photographer myself, just an amateur hobbyist.

Always been a fan of the tilt-shift effect (when done right). Thanks for posting that, Stopper.