Shallow No More

In 1998 if your pocket was vibrating, it could only mean a few distinct things: either your digital Tamagotchi pet needed feeding or you were being paged. Literally. The rectangular machine clipped onto your faded Levi’s was beckoning you to work or to respond to your peers via pager.

Our rectangular pocket machines have undergone significant updates in function and fashion since then. With these updates, came great demand, as our technological presence slowly begun to outweigh our lifelike presence. A modern life is chock-full of examples for hyper-connectedness, but with award show season on the forecast it seems fitting to reference the live-feeds that invade social media during nights like Sunday’s American Music Awards.

The 41^st showing of the AMA’s was decorated with chart-topping hits from the year, and some chart-topping performers of years past. Favorable or questionable, all opinions from the night of music were littered on Twitter and stamped on Instagram.

When Jennifer Lopez took to the red carpet, close-ups, wide shots and candid photos of her dress by designer, Reem Acra, which traced the curves of the 45-year-old’s toned bodywere splashed on Instagram. Centered on the visuals, the red carpet updates on Instagram let the public make early predictions as to whether J.Lo would appear on best or worst dressed lists. According to Hollywood Life, “We knew we were gonna see something totally sexy on her, but we didn’t think it was going to be something this revealing!”

Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet at the 2014 American Music Awards, drew by Reem Acra. Courtesy Hollywood Life.

On Twitter, however, garnering “likes” on photos took lower priority to the opinion sharing and commentary that this social media platform is known to collect. On my own Twitter feed, I learned whether my thoughts of J.Lo’s performance at the end of the show were in alignment with the greater population of viewers. J.Lo had me on my feet at the television, so I was happy to find that Twitter responses included, “Well @Jlo had a killer performance at the #AMAs2014” from @BrittaaanyXx and “WOW @Jlo!!! That performance was sick.. Shut it down #AMAs” from @PiaToscano.

The hyper-connectedness between the masses, as demonstrated above, is not only a daily privilege—it’s an opportunity that connects members of nearly every subculture in the U.S. and in the world from minute to minute in modernity. For popular culture fanatics, it necessitates a virtual connection, a red carpet of sorts that bridges the common critic to the celebrities we Tweet in support of.

I’ll admit my bias, and say that award show season is my Mecca. And I’m sitting front row with binoculars and the Thesaurus app open to find as many synonyms for “awe-inspiring” to Tweet about pop divas. However, there is a digital divide within these media spheres wherein specified conversations spiral out from the primary topic. The digital divide creates the cliques of the virtual sphere. This is seen in the access and know-how that Instagram users withhold in making a post with as much visual quality of a photocopied image from a 20^th century fax machine versus a post that belongs in an editorial magazine, and likely will if the right eyes see it.

Jennifer Lopez during her performance of "Booty" ft. Iggy Azalea at the 2014 American Music Awards. Courtesy of Daily Mail.

Keeping in tune with J.Lo during the AMAs, the digital divide spun into some prevalent categories all its own. When looking to J.Lo’s gown on the red carpet, Latino Twitter users dubbed her an array of fiery titles to assure that J.Lo represents a Latina pioneer—la chica ultima. Looking at the same gown, however, middle-aged women of non-Latin descent look to J.Lo and sparked discussion over her age. “Forty-five and fabulous,” they said.

And so she was. Lopez was “bellisma” and she was fabulous for her age. Thanks to the multimedia capabilities that reside in our rectangular pocket machines, celebrities are indebted to the general public in addition to the mainstream media for criticism and appraisal.

The depths of conversation burrow much deeper now, from media sphere to hashtag and the curated conversations that happen therein. It’s true for award shows and for the daily dealings of life. Society keeps connected with more than the shallow sonars of the pager from here on out.

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Widenening your Instagram-mar

 

No filter is no fun. Centered on exploiting your Friday nights, your guilty pleasures, successful or attempted adventures, etc. in the form of photo and video, the smart phone application called Instagram has been deemed a social media superhero for the last two years.

For users of the ever popular Instagram, the hash tag “nofilter” is synonymous with the white flag of surrender. With 19 photo filters and 13 video filters to choose from, this smartphone app is comparable to an electronic form of Photography for Dummies. By now, we’ve all found safety in our favorite filters. As hard as it is to admit, there are some objects and some faces that just aren’t complimented with an Amaro or Valencia filter.

 

Approach photography at a new angle, and check out these four applications to better your Instagram photos—to widen your Instagrammar.

Camera+

The iPhone is a gadget unlike those of our past (I’m talking to you, you once glamorous GameBoy Color). From your iPhone you can manage nearly every daily task, have Siri pick up your groceries, or even use the iPhone as a door stop. Yet the phone is equipped with a camera that might as well be an elderly man’s shaky monocle. Camera+ as an app, reduces the blurriness and enhances color detection in your photos for a truer, more appealing photo.

 

Aside from acting as a more stable camera, this app offers simple and complex edits. Some of the more elementary editing capabilities include tampering with exposure to make a photo lighter or darker. Perhaps you’re looking to crop the tip of your finger or that relentless photo-bomber who snuck into the photo. Camera+ can handle it, and even do you one better by adding a border to your photo, too, if you’d like.

 

Past the basics, there are a variety of effects to discover in Camera+. At first glance, you might think that these effects are merely Instagram filter knock-offs. Alas, they are not. One of the best parts of this app is the fact that you can decide the intensity level of the filter. If you should want the “‘70s” filter to look a little less reminiscent of the bell bottom years then you can simply add or subtract intensity that is applied to the photo.    

 

Whitagram

Taking inspiration from the grandfather photo, the Polaroid, Instagram photos are formatted to be square in shape. While it’s cute to scroll through a timeline of modern Polaroids scribbled on with emojis and slang, sometimes the square format crops the best pieces of your photo out. Next time your anxiety levels come dangerously close to “floor tantrum” because of the Instagram cropping, use Whitagram to capture your photo in its original stupor. In order to make the original sized photo fit, this app adds tasteful borders to the left and right, or top and bottom of the photo, depending on its orientation. Whitagram is especially useful for scenic, landscape photos that span side to side.

 

Phototreats

One of the sought-after trends on Instagram is the effect that will add sunspots, snowflakes, and holiday looking lights to photos. Someone deemed light distortion worthy and, not to be accusatory, but there’s a sunspot trail that leads right to fashionistas and socialites. If you’ve been looking for an app to add a corner of soft, flickering light to your posts, Phototreats will do just that. Really more directed at the femme users, these filters should be used not for making a statement, but for uttering a whisper.  

 

CameraTimer

The last recommended app for your improved Instagrammar will likely become the most praised in your repertoire of new tricks. So wake up introverts and individual adventurers, because there’s not always a passerby to snap a photo of you, and selfies are almost worse than being an offender of the “no filter” hash tag.

 

CameraTimer is an app that acts as a self-timer—much like the ones on digital cameras. The app is poorly formatted, but will add to the photo possibilities you have right in the palm of your hand. As long as you can fashion a tripod out of a rock, park bench, or book, you’ll never have to pass up a photo-op again. This app has also proved useful when looking to photograph your entire cluster of friends. With a variety of options for countdown length and number of shots taken, you’ll never find yourself wishing for longer arms for photo taking ever again.   

 

If Instagram were a member of the Full House cast, surely it would be the sleek and trendy Uncle Jesse. Twitter could pass as the comedic Uncle Joey, leaving Facebook with the dreaded and dull father-figure, Danny Tanner. The point here is that if given the option, the majority of us would only ever choose to hang out with Uncle Jesse. And now you can rise to the occasion, mustering content that is much more impressive than an indecipherable, “You got it, dude!”