An Insolent Southern Man

I've never cooked anything that required so much prep. It also made my recently cleaned kitchen look like a garbage truck had an accident in it. Nonetheless, I wanted to try something different. So I figured since it was freezing outside, that soup would be an appropriate supper.

In the quest to capture ideas when they happen, and share them with you whenever possible, I recently downloaded an app for my iPhone called BloggerPlus. I like the idea if being able to post and share on the go. This is my first post using it, and I just wanted to see how well it worked. I'm sure that later on, I'll be writing up a review and posting it here as well.

BTW - I already use the WordPress mobile app for my studio blog, but I've never actually posted anything with it. I've just used it to moderate comments. This being a Blogger blog, that app obviously wouldn't work.

Why not just take notes and remember things and write the post later? If you really need my answer to that, then go back and read my first post.

--Posted from my iPhone

I'm a backpacker. I have been since about 1992 or so. I love being on some high mountain ridge in the fall, looking down into a blaze colored valley. Or maybe spending a summer night up in a hollow under a rhododendron thicket by a rushing stream. Even walking on snow covered trails in sub freezing weather in the dead of winter, when you might go an entire weekend without seeing another soul is a great time for me. It's quiet then. Very peaceful. There's been times you could stop moving and your ears would start ringing from trying to hear anything in the silence.

Before you get knee deep in this post, I do realize that I just posted yesterday about an app on the iPhone that makes taking photos easy and fun, and that today's post somewhat contradicts that. But the difference is that there aren't people taking events, weddings, and portrait sessions away from hard working professionals by rushing out and buying the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone. (At least none that I know of...)

Take a look at this exceptionally misleading commercial:


More and more people are rushing out to their local Best Buy stores and buying SLR cameras, only to be using them in full automatic mode, with plastic kit lenses, and of course... not having a clue how to use them. Worse yet, they're buying higher end cameras like the 5D Mark II. All because of commercials like these and sales floor people that don't know the products their selling, combined with the American need to have the newest product available. No matter what - we gotta beat them Joneses!

I know of a couple of people that within the last year, just jumped out and bought high end cameras without any knowledge about photography at all. They just simply like taking bar or beach photos with their point and shoots, and they thought that an SLR would take them to that next level. A few weeks later, they're calling around to their friends with real experience, looking for the Richard Avedon button. Problem is, there isn't one. Learning how to use an SLR takes a lot of time, especially if you're just getting started. Aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO, all of these things are important in good photography. No auto mode is going to get you there without a LOT of luck.

What's worse is when you take someone like this and get them into Photoshop. Then things can get down right funny. It almost always happens too. They'll go out, buy and expensive camera, and when the photos don't turn out like they thought they would, they immediately assume it needs to be run through the gauntlet in Photoshop. Before long, the masterpiece is a haloed, over-saturated, over-sharpened piece of HDR crap that they'll post on Flickr, and a hundred other idiots that also don't know any better will ooh and ah over until our budding photographer is convinced that they're doing the right thing.

I've got more opinions about Flickr. I have a love/hate relationship with that site. I'll save that for another day.

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If you live in Georgia, then you probably know that we had a cold front move though earlier in the week. It's been really windy since it went through too. Before the front came, my yard was buried under a sea of leaves from the nine enormous oak, and four mature pecan trees that are located on our lot. You may or may not know that I've been nursing a broken leg since the end of September. I'm getting around better now, but I'm not ready to get out and rake leaves. Even if I were, I'd still not likely get out and actually rake them. Run over them with the lawnmower is more like it, but not rake the whole yard into piles in which to burn, bag up, compost, or whatever.

My neighbor across the road however, doesn't share my contentment to let nature take her course leave the yard covered. She has a couple of white pines in her yard, which they keep the needles neatly raked up around the trunks of the trees. She's an elderly lady that has a grandson, who is older than I am, living with her. I've been living here since 2001, and I've never known him to have a job either. Yet, she pays a man to come and mow their grass and keep the yard neat and clean every week or so. To make matters worse, they own a John Deere riding mower -and her grown, unemployed grandson still doesn't cut her grass! ( I've actually seen him do it once. That was earlier this year. And that was the first time ever in the almost ten years I've been here.)

Since they live to the east, and these post front, super strong prevailing winds have been out of the west, guess whose yard is now covered in leaves? Not mine!

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I have to admit it, I play with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. I know, I know... all the cool photographers hate it. You now what? I don't give a $#!+. In fact, I'm sick of all the elitist attitude. I liked photography a whole lot more when I was having fun and it was less of a job. I used to get out and ride around, looking for old houses, barns, and other rural southern scenes to shoot. After I started doing portraits, I lost interest in scenes almost altogether. Sure, I like looking at other people's work, but I didn't care to get out and shoot stuff myself.

Now, before we go any further, let's get something straight. Not every post I do here is going to be photography related. This is just what happens to be on my mind today. Since this is a Blogger blog site, it's a whole lot easier for me to just use Picasa to upload and host my images. Sure, I could use Flickr, but I don't want to post everything over there just so I can use it here. I've got all of my hiking and backpacking photos over there, and I'd like to keep it that way. Last night I installed the Picasa App on my laptop, and it scanned though my libraries, and I happened to come across my iPhone photos from back in the summer. That's what led me to thinking about Hipstamatic.

I've got a load of photos on there that I really, really like on there. Like this one:



I love this photo! What I love even more was that I all I did was choose a few settings, point the thing , and shoot. A few seconds later and "POOF!" - Instant cool photo.

So why do most photographers I know hate this app? I actually think they hate it because of a few reasons: 1.) They see a little too much of it coming from people. 2.) It takes better photos than the ones they spend hours in Photoshop trying to make themselves. 3.) Perhaps it's because it allows common users to make photos that are more interesting than the ones they invested time and energy into making. Either way, it's a shortcut that anyone can use to make retro-looking photos.

That being said, it's not an end all means. There's still looks you can't do with it. There will always be the art form of carefully crafting an image. So my advice to the naysayers is to get off your high horses and let it be. If you're being shown up by a Hipstamatic photo, then perhaps you need to step up your game instead of hating the app.

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