iWeekend

I spent the weekend with my mom and aunt Debbie, who came down to LA for a visit. I wouldn't be me if I didn't squire them around the city and have every plan nailed down, so no surprises there. I also wouldn't be me if I didn't document every last second of the experience, but I didn't have my camera on hand, so I entrusted the task to the mighty iPhone. 

While I could treat the images I captured there in the same way that I do my professional work, it's fairly apparent that camera phone pictures have taken on their own cultural language. I feel more freedom to allow the photos to express themselves within the framework of that language, loathsome though it may be most of the time. I'm ardently antagonistic when it comes to applying filters and other fancy faux-vintage facsimiles onto my work, but when it comes to iPhone pictures, the rules I hold myself to are more lax. 

There will come a time when any photo bearing the trampstamp of a faux-vintage patina will be blighted as the temporary ephemera of the Aughts, and when that time comes, you can be sure I'll tear myself away from hating whatever fad is currently in use to rejoice that we're no longer doing that anymore. But cell phone pictures feel more impressionistic to me, a fleeting moment in time captured and presented as just that: Fleeting. Temporary. A fad, a gradation within the cultural cloud. They aren't meant to stand the test of time as much as they bear testament to time's ever-onward trudge. 

I'm okay with that.