I love Hipstamatic photos taken with our iPhones. I love the crazy filters, the borders, the instant nostalgia, the way they mask or elevate or transform everyday scenes into something magical.
And above all of that, I love that the Hipstamatic filter hides those flaws in the photos I take when I'm out and about and don't have my "real" camera with me. Besides, as Travis recently said, "The best camera is the camera you have with you." So true.
Thus, it is so tempting to take most of my photos with my iPhone and its Hipstamatic app. And as I import our pictures, from both Travis and me, I notice the percentage shifting each month. More and more iPhone photos, fewer and fewer images taken with the DSLR.
And yet I wonder: Will we one day regret this? Will I look back at this time in my life and wish I had more pictures that showed the scenes from my life realistically, rather than transformed into some ethereal, filtered version of my life? Will we all collectively look back at this trend the way we now look at the days of cutting photos into stars, hearts, and other cutesy, outdated shapes in scrapbooking?
Trends scare me. Because they depart as quickly as they arrived, and if you embrace the wrong one too strongly, you end up looking foolish. And fickle. And where's the line between the two anyway?
I tend to value the real. The authentic. I'm constantly weighing whether I like something because I like it or because I want to appear to other people to like it. What is my authentic reaction? Do I like Hipstamatic prints because they appeal to me, or because they appeal to everyone else?
Then I read my first paragraph again, and I realize that there is a reaction in my core that draws me to this look, trendy though it may be. I LOVE these images. The filtered effects almost make them MORE real to me; they're a better representation of how I feel about them and how I'd imagine these scenes in my mind's eye. These photos are my feelings and impressions made visible, tangible (even though these three examples were taken by my Hubster, Travis, because, let's face it, his are better than mine).
So, I feel okay about it. Because if I'm doing something for no other reason than to fit in, I feel like I've lost a little bit of myself.
Other trends I wonder about:
- In photography, I wonder about angel wings added to children in photos and adult-size butterfly wings worn by grown women wearing June Cleaver-style dresses to give that fairy-tale effect to a photo. Where is the line between it looking sweet (which it can be) and becoming self-parody?
- And in music, I wonder about all the ladies with the red lipstick who look like 1940s pin-up models and sing with their baby-doll voices that barely whisper at times, as if they're telling you an intimate secret, as they sing about balloons, soda pop, and dreams (and also, I'm certain, some of them sing about unicorns) with plinking piano music in the background. Which of them are expressing their real selves this way (Zooey Deschanel, I think, is) and which are simply following along?
- And in the blogosphere, I wonder about the women who refer to their spouses over and over again with a cutesy nickname. (Pioneer Woman may have started it all by calling her hubby "Marlboro Man," which was and is charming. But it seems others think it's a requirement in order to have a blog.) If he had the nickname before you had your blog, that's one thing, but if the nickname was generated specifically for the blog, is it simply for effect? To fit in?*
- And in general, I wonder about the members of the hipster subculture who try so hard to be different and unique from the mainstream world, and in doing so, end up all looking exactly like each other. Some of them, no doubt, have always dressed this way (like my brother-in-law, who's been wearing Chuck Taylors nonstop since 1994). But are others just riding the wave?
Why do these things both attract and puzzle me at the same time?
I think the fascinating part is that if it's real, and if it's YOU, and if you find a trend that strikes a chord with you, and thus you embrace it, then I admire that. But if it's just an attempt to fit in, then that's the part that, for me, doesn't ring true. (Of course, I know I've always been one to think and care about "authenticity" more than other people. It's a curse, thanks to my Myers-Briggs personality type. But more on that another time.)
Hipster Attributes include:
- Men wearing Chuck Taylor Converse, skinny jeans, a button-up shirt and a bowtie, with black-framed glasses and gelled hair that's parted too far on one side
- Women dressing like June Cleaver, with a large handmade necklace or headband up top and either '40s-inspired heels or converse sneakers on bottom. (I only wish I had the body for such dresses.)
- Cat-eye glasses and pin-up girl hairstyles. (My mom rocked this look in the '60s!)
- Androgynous hairstyles with sideswept bangs on both men and women.
- Thrift-store clothing (or expensive clothing that is carefully designed to look thrift).
- Riding vintage (or vintage-looking) bicycles, with baskets of flowers on the front. Or perhaps riding one just long enough to be photographed doing so.
- Horizontal striped shirts, super skinny jeans, and a scarf or a retro-style hat.
- And, according to Urban Dictionary, possessing no more than 5% body fat and very little muscle tone. (That rules me out on both counts.)
It reminds me of a game my friends and I used to play when we'd go out and about. If you see a duo or trio of teenage girls, they are often dressed quite similarly, if not exactly alike except for the colors of their shirts. The game is, "Which is the original and which is the copy?" And it's usually quite easy to determine.
What about you? What are your thoughts about trends, fads, and fitting in? Where's the line for you personally?
There's always been a side of me that's far too practical to ever be a true artist (and definitely not an arTEEST). And this may be the blog post that proves it. And I may also be showing my age... :)
* Note: Did you notice the introduction of a snarky new nickname for Travis? Yeah, "Hubster" was just a joke--a little precursor to bullet point #3. You can't blame a girl for trying to fit in.
