From Dawn til Dusk

Before we all had phones in our pockets that had picture taking capabilities; I would ride around with a disposable camera in my car to take pictures of whatever image that I wanted to capture. I would hold my camera out of the sunroof of my Mustang and snap pictures of a beautiful sunset or stop to take a picture of an old building. I guess you can say that I was Instagram…before there was an Instagram.  I was taking pictures of sunsets when the symbol for the hashtag was still the pound sign. When cell phones began to advance and the tiny little cameras were an finally an option for our smarter phones; I took advantage of the technology.

Over the years, technology is starting to capture the images the way that we see them. In the case of Snapchat and Instagram filters, the images that we take sometimes look better than the ones that we actually take. According to Apple, the most popular thing to take a picture of, according to iCloud uploads, is either a selfie or something found in nature. Whereas the 2nd (or 3rd if you don’t like that that was a tie) most popular thing photographed is some sort of animal. One of the most popular animals (second only to our beloved household dogs and cats) is a bird. Of course the category of ‘birds’ encompasses everything from ducks and geese to chickens and pigeons. The places that are photographed the most is Paris, New York, and Barcelona.

Is that an indication of how we perceive beauty in our society? We either find ourselves being drawn to the beauty of nature, historically beautiful places, or the beauty of ourselves. I think I’m okay with that honestly because nature photos are my favorite. While driving home from work, heading to the store or the gym, if I look and see the clouds and horizon line have that glow that appears to be so much more than the sun reflecting upon them, I’ll just stop on the side of the road to capture that moment when the clouds light up with incandescent oranges and vivid yellows. Now-a-days my phone is full of landscape photos just like all of those rolls of film from disposable cameras back before the time of smart phones. Technology may have changed…whereas my appreciation for nature has not.