Do you ever get the feeling that having a unique skill is not really that special at all? Well honestly, it just might not be. If you took a photography course, own an SLR (single lens reflex) camera, or even have a dark room, it may have all been for nothing. It seems as though nowadays anyone and everyone can probably do all the things you spent years learning to do. Everyone can be a pro in today’s day and age with the new phone application, Instagram.
Instagram, launched in October 2010, is a phone application (commonly referred to as an “app”) designed to give people the ability to snap photographs after “adding filters to make them look retro, and then for sharing them with sites like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook” as explained by Dan Frommer of Business Insider.
People can comment, share, “like” photos, and keep up with their friends’ lives with each upload.
Sara Rivka Stromer, a senior at Stern College for Women, says “Instagram means extra fun with my regular camera on my phone!” An anonymous Instagramer describes her upload anticipation: “I literally hold my breath, cross my fingers and hope I will get over 5 people to comment and like my pictures on Facebook.”
The most interesting aspect of Instagram photos is that they are in no way professional. Sometimes the shots are of empty cups on a restaurant table, the corner of a window, a rose on a park bench. But, with the added effects, however, they can look quite impressive. Stromer describes Instagram as “a fun hobby…apparently everyone is a photographer nowadays because of Instagram!”
With all the people commenting and liking these pictures, the person who took them becomes a talented Instragramer, and in their minds, a photographer.
Instragramers may even put “photographer” on their resume under extracurricular activities and interests. The anonymous Instagramer claims, “I actually really enjoy drawing, and I’ve been building up a portfolio for some time. I’ve decided to print my Instagram pictures on large pieces of high quality paper and add them to my portfolio. Who knows, maybe those pictures will tip my resume over the edge.” Instagramers have a lot of pictures to show. It seems as though they are as talented as the next guy, and they are also passionate about their social media adeptness.
Now for all the people who do own SLRs, who have spent their life savings on photography classes and Adobe Photoshop, who have travelled the world with their cameras and photography in mind, and have planned every vacation centered on photo opportunities they too will have what to show for their picture taking abilities. How does Instagram make these photographers feel now that to any layman the pictures on Facebook and Twitter look almost identical? Ilan Regenbaum, esteemed YU student photographer explains “I do have a problem with those people calling themselves photographers, or attributing their own skill to the picture. If you want to call yourself a photographer in this digital age, it is irrelevant what camera you have, but it is how you use it. In my eyes photography as a whole has been downgraded as an art…Photography used to be an art that required one to be an expert in composition and exposure, but now one can take 20 pictures of the same subject and one is bound to be good.”
Yonatan Sklar, notorious HASC photographer, explains that while on the one hand he agrees the app allows amateur photo fanatics to make “garbage look meaningful,” he concludes that these people are “just out to bring more light to the world.” While it might bother him that everyone is experimenting with photography, Sklar believes that “these doers change the world in a very acute but necessary way. They take the ordinary and transform it to the extraordinary. They break down barriers and stigmas that say that if you don’t have the right tools you shouldn’t try… Let me tell you, if you think you can—try. If you can’t–innovate.”
So now I beg to ask the question, what really makes someone a photographer? Is it just having a collection of photos that people think are great, owning priceless camera equipment, or both? To Regenbaum, being a photographer requires one to “set up a picture, compose it, and set the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in order to get the desired exposure. So let people use Instagram to their hearts’ content, but if you don’t know what ‘f stop’ means then don’t call yourself a photographer.”