Remember photo albums? Remember when you just put pictures in a book and that was enough?
Apparently, it's not. There's this trend called "scrapbooking," which I have been oblivious to - mostly because I didn't get married at 20 and pop out kids; young married moms and older married housewives are the main devotees of this hobby. Apparently, the more intrinsically uneventful your life is, the more fastidiously and ornately you memorialize it.
In a scrap book, you don't just put your photos in. Oh no. There are brightly colored pages, and stickers with pictures and lettering. So, say you have a picture of your child's birthday. You put the photo on the page. Then you stencil the words "Happy Birthday Son!" across the page, and plaster on some stickers of presents and cake, and maybe you glue in a paper napkin or some wrapping paper from the party for good measure. Now you have a whole birthday collage, a vibrant and exciting theme. This livens up the dullness of the photographs because really, what's so interesting about those that they could stand on their own?
This phenomenon of scrapbooking has indicated one thing to me: People take really shitty pictures. Instead of taking good pictures that are interesting to look at, they throw lots of color and glitter on the page and hope you won't notice how boring, badly composed, and otherwise substandard their photographs are. Not unlike a fat woman wearing fuschia -- the goal is distraction.
My personal feeling is that if you have the time to stencil, paste, and decorate an album...maybe, just maybe, you have the time to learn how to photograph. But then again, maybe these people are like the fat lady in fuschia, and would rather just wear really bright colors than make the effort to get on a treadmill. Oh hell, these people ARE fat ladies in fuschia.
It all makes sense to me now...
Comments (2)
as a 20-something mother and wife, i highly resent this. i look at the scrapbooking materials i was given as a gift with about as much comprehension as i would look at a book written in chinese. heck, i barely even take pictures. i just mooch off the gazillion pictures my mother takes of my child.
of course, i am not a large woman dressed in fushia, either. i am a proud size 6 in a black button-down.
Posted by Amy | October 1, 2007 4:12 PM
Posted on October 1, 2007 16:12
Heheh, I knew you would say something! ;)
This entry doesn't apply to the smartly dressed Miss I-Lost-the-Baby-Weight.
I also know that you are as baffled by this phenomenon as I am, and that you are the frequent beneficiary of a proud grandma with a camera. Ain't no shame.
Posted by me | October 2, 2007 12:34 PM
Posted on October 2, 2007 12:34