An Attempt at Photography With No Talent
If there’s any complex that my generation and I share, it is that we believe we are experts at everything. Like, I mean everything.
“You ate at Hooters on Tuesday? Why aren’t you a judge on Master Chef operating that killer palate of yours?”
“That’s a nice tune you’ve been humming. You should totally score movie films! I bet Spielberg can use you for that War Horse: Vietnam sequel!”
“I really like the blouse you got at Ross; run a fashion blog, OR VOGUE!”
“Missed opportunity not being a firefighter, I feel like nobody but you would have realized not to put my Yankee Candle underneath those drapes I made out of Parisian silk and BP oil spill gasoline sludge.”
And I say this with no hint of sarcasm or early 2000’s Paris & Nicole “geez” inflection in my tone; we are warped in la cabeza.
The other day my dad told me I should think about working in a funeral home because I didn’t cry at my great aunt’s burial and because I’m a nice person, and for a second I thought, “maybe?” It seems that’s all it takes to be an expert in embalming and providing a grieving family with the lasting image of their loved one. Score.
It is ridiculous. It used to be the only status twenty-something’s attained for was rock god of the keytar. Now we have apps like Instagram that make every person with an iPhone or pimped out Razor taking filtered pictures of their morning bagel thinking that the New York Times are going to email them asking for help photographing the Oscars or the Greek debt crisis. I know this because this is how I think. I get more than 15 likes on an Instagram of my leather watch and all of a sudden I’m looking at Craigslist jobs for professional photographers. I’ve had my mom’s nice Canon camera that she bought to take pictures of my sister’s drill team dances from the bleachers for a while now and have made countless attempts to understand all of the bells and whistles on it. I usually see a picture like this:
And think I can create something along those lines, but it usually turns out like this:
(I like to think of this as a metaphor for Kony)
And yet for some reason my warped mind that knows that I live in a world where the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo Child have reality show deals thinks with tilted head and shrugged shoulders, “maybe?”
Now, if you would like to see twenty-somethings who are actually killing it in the photography game, please check out their awesome works here, here, here, here, and here.
And if you made a pretty decent Spotify playlist, trust me when I say that you are going to be soundtracking the next season of The Mentalist so hard come fall. This is just how it works in our warped day and age.