“What's more, I think Instagram's image-altering filters are a key part of my visual awakening, because they often take meh photographs and render them newly weird, making me look at the subjects in a new way. Plenty of folks have critiqued the fad towards lo-fi photography on the iPhone (like the Hipstamatic), arguing that it harnesses nostalgia to make boring pictures seem artificially cool. ¶ I'm sure that's true for some people. But filtering makes me look at stuff with fresh eyes. The unaltered picture of that brownstone door was attractive enough; but after the Lomo filter I realized it reminded me of a Tardis. I began scrutinizing otherwise blasé stuff in my house, wondering, hmm, how would that look with a filter applied? This reached its apotheosis -- or nadir, depending on how you look at it -- a few days ago while taking out the trash, when I found myself regarding the decrepit lids of my plastic garbage cans in whoa-dude daze. I whipped out Instagram and discovered that -- hey -- the lids' texture looks vaguely lunar if you strip out enough color detail. (Snapshots below the jump! For those who cannot wait to see my garbage-can lids.) ¶ And this, really, is what I love most about new communications tools. At their best, they encourage us to pay attention to our lives in new ways.” #паттерны - × × ×