After a lifetime of taking almost uniformly terrible pictures, modern technology in the form of camera on my phone plus the special effects magic of Instagram filters has allowed me to improve my game a bit:
Balyeat’s Coffee Shop, Van Wert, OH
Barrington, IL
While there is almost nothing a person with a good command of Photoshop can’t do to an image to make it better, worse, older, younger, or different, my experiments with Instagram have given me a way at last to show what my heart sees when I snap a picture.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. – 1 Cor. 13:11-12
Young children draw what is in their hearts, scribbling with abandon on a sheet of construction paper. Most of us stop drawing about the time we realize what we see isn’t the same as what we’re trying to reproduce on a blank page. The frustration of the dissonance keeps us from continuing to play. Instagram has been for me a way to play again. Because I have the sense that when we see fully and completely, when we know as we are known, we may be more like the children we once were than we can possibly imagine.
What about you? Do you love or hate the idea of tweaking a photo with some filters? Why?
