Instagram Filters and The Eyes Of Faith

Instagram Filters and The Eyes Of Faith

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:

original image Balyeat's Coffee Shop, Van Wert, OH
Original image.
Balyeat’s Coffee Shop, Van Wert, OH
Saturated color highlights the sign's decay.
Instagram: Cropping and oversaturated color highlights the landmark sign’s decay.

 

Original image. Barrington, IL.
Original image.

Barrington, IL

Cropping and contrast adjustment highlighted the color of the unexpected petunia growing out of a crack in the brick sidewalk.
Instagram: Cropping and contrast adjustment brought out the color of the unexpected petunia growing out of a crack in the brick sidewalk.

 

original boys
Original image. Barrington, IL
Slightly cropped, and warmed up a bit.
Instagram: Slightly cropped, and warmed up a bit, because this is how my grandsons’ smiles make me feel.

 

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?


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