The Problem of Word Inflation and Photography
It seems every news and blog site that I visit these days in inundating me with stunning photos. Sometimes the photos are labeled “Jaw Dropping” or “Amazing” or “Incredible” and usually the pictures are great to be honest but just as often they are just above average pictures with exaggerated headlines.
What’s going on here? When did every picture become stunning? And if every picture is stunning, is any picture stunning really? I mean how stunned can I get?
If I’m initially stunned into a stupor looking at a Jeffrey Mcgillicuty’s picture of the sunset, do I get progressively more stunned as I view pictures of Aunty Ellie’s shot of her steak and egg breakfast in the Bahamas? Do I get even further stunned to the point that I cannot drop my jaw to the floor for the jaw-dropping shot of Hawaii that Yahoo says I will not believe? How much more comatose into stundom can I get?
It’s called word inflation and it’s a little out of control
I was in Peru years ago and as I crossed the border they made me cash 60 dollars US into Peruvian dollars because there was rampant hyper inflation and they wanted US Dollars in the country. I gave them $60 and they gave me 15 huge stacks of Peruvian dollars that measured at least a foot high. I felt like a millionaire. By the time I left Peru two days later that same stack of bills was worth about half of what I changed it for.
Me and Aaron and just a portion of the near worthless money we had.
Well, the same thing seems to have happened in describing photography. I did a Google Trend search on the word “stunning” and I found it’s use on the internet nearly doubled in less than 10 years. Apparently a heck of a lot more things are stunning than ever before.
Not an excellent graph but it does show a doubling of the word “Stunning” as it appears on the internet
And the word jaw dropping appears to be just as bad
What can we do?
Well the first thing we need to do is find two new words that far surpass stunning and jaw dropping in describing photography. Maybe we can use “brain paralyzing” in place of stunning and “heart stopping” in place of jaw dropping to tell people about our awesome photographs. Since stunning has become so mundane we need to up the ante a bit. Or we could simply refer to great photographs for what they are – great photographs, and good photographs for what they are- good photographs.
Now, I leave you with a brain paralyzing photo.
InstantLab – Transferring Iphone Photos to Polaroids
The Impossible Project is an amazing little company that is giving second life to Polaroid Instant Film. Since Polaroid Instant Film was stupidly abandoned by Polaroid Corporation in favor of their lame Zink printing technology, which no one likes, the film was destined to go away forever which would have been a shame. The Impossible Project aimed to, and eventually succeeded in keeping the Polaroid film manufacturing plants up and running.
The InstantLab
One of the clever things that Impossible Project has done is to provide a neat little contraption which allows me to take my iPhone and convert a picture I take into an actual Polaroid Film Print. The whole process takes about 20 minutes per print (mostly development time) and uses a little tower that you place your iPhone on so it can record the image to film. I think I have processed at least 100+ images on it and its a ton of fun.
Where to get it
You can buy the InstantLab at Impossible Project and it currently runs about $199 which is a little steep but it is actually a great way to ensure that you capture some of your iPhone images so that they will last a lifetime and not just until you upgrade to the iPhone 6. The film is pretty expensive too and can run about $2 a print or more but I am always on the lookout for specials and they have quite a few promotions throughout the year. Besides, its nice to support a company that is doing something to save a valuable part of photographic history – Polaroid Film
Sunset California Dreamin
Another beautiful sunset in La Jolla. The waters off the Pacific are warming up making for very nice swimming conditions – particularly at sunset.
Bram on the Beach
We took a walk to watch the sunset and ran into Bram tonight. No one looks happier than Bram heading into the water on his surfboard to catch the last waves of the day.
Commute To the Depths of Hell
Do you ever think you have a commute to hell? Sometimes, I think that but today it really looked like it. We got evacuated from our building and had to leave Carlsbad, along with about 50,000 other people.
This is what it looked like.
The Colors of Chicano Park San Diego
Spent a bit of time this afternoon taking pictures at one of my favorite places in San Diego – Chicano Park.
