I used to hate on Instagram hardcore. My argument was,

“You don’t even have to know anything about photography to take good pictures!”

 Now I love Instagram, my argument is,

 “You don’t even have to know anything about photography to take good pictures!”

  The change in attitude is largely due to an idea that I’ve been confronted with a lot lately. I’ve worked with a couple different people in the past year, and there are really two types of people doing art.

 Artists Vs. Technicians. Last week I was privileged to go on the Framed set for filming Brooke Shaden. It was a SICK time and I had a lot of fun with those guys. Brooke takes absolutely incredible pictures, and I was super stoked to get a behind-the-scenes look at her Photoshop work. Guess what? I’m way better at Photoshop than her. Also guess what? She takes better pictures than me.

  Basically, what I’m learning about life is that you have people that are smart, good at what they do, they’ve been doing it for years, and at the end of the day nobody gives a shit. Then there are people that don’t really have a clue, but they started doing it and their work connected with a bunch of people and now they’re famous and an authority on the subject. You know what happens when that goes down? The people that are “good” at the same subject get PISSED. There are artists and there are technicians, which do you think is which?

Product Vs. Process. The thing about art that is so very special and makes it different than most aspects of life is that the process is secondary to the product. For most things, you can’t have a good product unless the process itself is top notch. You can’t build a house unless you’ve:

• planned it out,
• surveyed the ground,
• you’ve got a good crew of trained professionals,
• use the proper supplies.

Now you can paint the exact same house and:

• It’s the first painting you’ve ever done,
• you get the proportions all wrong,
• the shadows don’t actually fall in the right way,
• the paints you used could not be the “right” paints for the job.

But that painting could touch the hearts of millions of people and you’re remembered and your work is passed on.

Instagram is a perfect example of this. The thing about IG is that you’ve still got some pretty awful pictures on there. But you have beautiful work too, and the stuff that’s beautiful could be the very first picture that some kid who has never touched a DSLR in their life has taken. They probably have no clue what a friggin’ F-stop is, but it’s still beautiful. So that’s what I’m learning. When it comes to art, execution is shadowed by the conclusion and that is absolutely beautiful. For fun, here’s some of my IG snaps.