rose-colored lenses.

They say we take photos to "capture the moment," but with digital photography & crazy photoshopping skills, pictures these days seem very far from reality.

I appreciate the art of photography... well at least to the extent of saving random images by Annie Leibovitz and Tim Walker for no apparent reason (or I guess that reason being that they're beautiful, fanciful, or intriguing).

But I guess I usually see a clear distinction between photography as an art form and photography as tokens of memory (like photos that you would put in your photo album to show your grandchildren how good you used to look back in the day). I mean it's one thing where you take out the red-eye or touch up the image by brightening, but it's another thing to see picture of places or people that are beyond the point of recognition.

For instance, I see pictures of weddings and think "wow that's a really pretty wedding!" Then I realize that I was there. But in my memory, it looked totally different (or to put it bluntly- not pretty).

I almost bought a Diana camera last year, but then I realized:
1. I don't really enjoy taking pictures
2. I'd feel like I was living a lie (Diana pictures always come out looking too cool, too vintage-y... my life isn't that cool... or vintage for that matter).

And I can't help but to feel a bit gypped when I amazing pictures of people and see their not-better-half in person (though some are just blessed with being photogenic). Koreans (the ones back in the mainland) seem to be especially skilled at "beautifying" themselves in pictures. They are the 포샾 kings & queens. I remember my cousins wanted to set my brother up with this Korean girl, and they showed us a picture. I thought she looked pretty cute, but my cousins secretly whispered to me "trust us... she doesn't look like that." That's when I realized she had brightened up the picture to the point where she was noseless. No wonder she looked cute... she looked like a noseless, anime character.

I'm not gonna lie. There are (numerous) times where I've retaken a picture. Isn't that what girls do?
*SNAP*
feet scurrying together to see how they came out.
"Omg so ugly!" "Look at my face!" "I look so fat!" "Let's take another one!"

I guess that is the blessing/curse of digicams: keep the pretty, discard the ugly. What have we turned into??? It's almost like book censorship (sorry, I'm doing a paper on this, and I had to somehow tie it all together).

Okay... should go back to paper now.

arriverderci~