iPhone = iPhotographer...Not So Much

My wife and I got iPhones for Christmas, after waiting patiently for years for the price of owning one to drop to the level we could afford to pay. I love the phone, and while I use Mac products almost exclusively, this isn't a post on the glories of Apple products. This is a post on the danger of having a phone that takes semi-decent photos.

See, I've developed this problem recently: I suddenly think I'm a photographer. Because the iPhone camera is so darn easy to use, I find myself looking for interesting things to take pictures of. And like any good photographer, I shoot about 300 photos just to find one good one.

Problem is, I still don't take great pictures.

I have the creative desire. I have the eye to see nifty things to snap pictures of. I just don't have the ability to line up at the right angle, or the knowledge of how to use the natural light to my advantage, or the skill to snap a photo without looking like a complete tool.

Nine times out of ten, I end up looking like exactly what I am: a goofy dad trying to do something cool. If there's any saving grace for me, it's the fact that my kids aren't old enough yet to understand that I'm embarrassing them AND taking horrible pictures. They kind of dig it.

Fortunately I'm not alone. I've noticed that there are other aspiring photographers who not only wouldn't know a good camera from a bad one, or a zoom from a telephoto lens (assuming there's a difference). I see other people with their smart phones looking not so smart while taking snapshots of their food, or their friends, or their duckface. In fact, saw an older woman duckfacing yesterday while taking a selfie.

I almost took a picture of her.

The real problem for me comes when I have to go back through the pictures I've taken. I suddenly realize just how horrible I am. Despite the fact that the iPhone camera is relatively easy to operate, and positioned well so as to avoid your finger being in front of the lens, and comes with a massive screen that should make it easy for me to see that I have a finger in front of the lens, I still end up with a disturbingly high number of photos with my finger in front of the lens. It's almost like there's a "finger obstruction" option that I've accidentally turned on. I can't figure out how to turn it off.

Even worse comes when I see people posting all their cool filtered and edited photos online. Or the photos where they mash 2,034 photos into one. I look at that and think: my phone doesn't do that. I've since learned Twitter and Facebook give you tools to help you filter your shots to look better, but I somehow manage to choose the wrong filter every time. And I still don't know how to do the multiple-photos-in-one-picture thingy.

Bottom line is I worry I'm too caught up in taking pictures with my phone, to the point that I'm missing out on life. I know that's a problem for some people, and I don't want it to be me. But on the other hand, I don't take pictures of my kids like other people do, and I'm terrified that when it comes time for them to look back on their lives, they won't have enough photographs to help them remember things. I've learned over the years just how important pictures are to a family; just how many memories can be accessed by a simple picture.

I don't want my kids to miss out on that.

I'll try to find the balance, I suppose: take enough pictures to make memories, but not be so obsessed with snapping shots that I miss the memories being made. After all: what good are pictures that only remind my kids that I was taking pictures the entire time? I want them to look at the photos I take and say, "Wasn't that an awesome moment? I remember dad laughing, and mom smiling, and we got ice cream at that little place by the beach..." And on and on until they've wrung all of the details and emotion from that moment they can.

I'll let go of my creative-person need to be good at anything artistic - my life won't end if I suck at photography - because I think that's what keeping me from enjoying capturing the pictures of our life. There's no need for me to try and make everything look good; after all, true beauty comes from life as it happens, not as some deranged father tries to make it look through the camera lens. Plus, I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that appearance is what matters. I want them to know that what's real is what's important.

Sounds like a lot for a guy with an iPhone camera to think about, but it's true nonetheless.