The irony, of course, is that with all the shiny tech, Facebook is fast filling up with mobile uploads that look like this:

Welcome to 1973, kids.  Courtesy of apps like Hipstamatic, ShakeIt, and CrossProcess, you too can immortalize your memories in the half-tones reminiscent of washed-out Polaroids without ever having to endure the polyester pants and dirty sideburns.

Once upon a time, exposure to this effect was limited—magazines, album art, maybe some billboards.  And the reason for this is simple: producing this effect was never easy.

The technical term is cross-processing.  And it’s a technique that evolved mostly by mistake.  Back when film was king, photographers noticed that if they accidentally used a chemical solution other than the one explicitly meant to develop their film, the resulting images took on a gritty, high-contrast look.  The interesting bit is that the effect was never completely uniform; depending on the batch of film, the type of film (slide or colour-negative), and how it was developed, there was a kind of unpredictable nature to the process that made it fun and truly unique.

More recently, software-savvy photogs could achieve a similar vintage feel by manipulating colour, exposure, and curves in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop.  But you still had to have a basic understanding of things like layers and presets, which made the whole thing off-limits to many.

Now, though, all it takes is the tap of a finger on a screen.  And presto!  Insta-time travel.

The thing I find most exasperating, however, isn’t  the crazy rate at which people have discovered and embraced the look.  You can totally have fun with something without having to have some deep, technical knowledge of how it works.  (A cake baked from a Betty Crocker mix isn’t any less delicious because you didn’t mill the flour and harvest the eggs yourself—it’s just easier!)  And there’s definitely great images out there where the photo subject is well-complemented by the colour and tone adjustment.

The maddening factor kicks in whenever I see 500 photos posted up of the most random things by someone who now fancies themselves an artist.

No, your clubbing photo is not suddenly old-school because it looks like there’s a retro frame on it.

And no, your morning cup of coffee is not suddenly a masterpiece because you’ve applied a heavy-handed filter to it.

It’s kind of like… everyone’s so busy oohing and ahhing over what their iPhone can do, no one’s thinking about what their iPhone is photographing.  Cross processing can be really cool and lend a person all kinds of creative options – but it’s not a magic wand and it can’t turn a boring picture into art.  Subtlety—and at least some(!) cognizance of what you’re shooting—is totally key here.  And, unfortunately, while a $1.99 app will give you a few tools to mix and match when creating effects… overall, it generally has the subtlety of a sledgehammer when it comes to applying them to an image.

In the end I suppose, just like selective colouring and that godawful fisheye craze, this too will pass.  I’m just hoping some other things STAY in the 70′s.  Like pea-green appliances.  And Dorothy Hamill hair.

Have you ever been out at the bar, or at a friends place, and in lieu of actual conversation you are surrounded by five people silently typing into their cell phones? This usually ends once somebody stumbles upon an amusing video, after which everybody crowds around a single tiny screen to watch something asinine (usually, involving a cat).

Then everyone goes back to updating their Twitter feeds about this hilarious cat video they just saw.

I used to laugh at those people (yes, even you), proudly clinging on to my luddite brick phone that had no web browser, no touch screen and no way to upload my naked photos to Facebook.

Alas, upon renegotiating my plans with Rogers they offered me an IPhone for basically nothing and I agreed, stipulating to myself that I would use it only as a normal phone. Naturally, this is not what has happened. Balls.

As a result, I now find myself trolling the internet reading about new apps I can download, ignoring the other human beings in the coffee shop next to me. On the bright side, never will I have to walk into a fire hydrant while sending a text message again.

[via Boing Boing]