Photography is not for amateurs.

I like to troll the photo postings that people put online to share their lives with their friends, and strangers for that matter. The emergence of sites like www.ofoto.com has deluded people into thinking there is something intrinsically interesting about their lives. Take for example the man who posts hundreds of pictures of his toy poodle, Sassafrass. Sassafrass is a sickly-looking rat dog that quivers at the sight of anyone other than it's owner and is at risk of falling into the garbage disposal. Sassafrass' owner, however, thinks that the world needs to be introduced to the modeling prowess of Sassafrass and so he puts up hundreds of photographs of Sassafrass in myriad poses. Sassafrass at the beach. Sassafrass going to the post office. Sassafrass at the dentist. You get the idea. Descriptively titled photographs that are intended to share your life with the world, when in actuality you are just building a case-file for any hitman who ever has to come kill you. He'll know where you are most of the time, who you hang out with, and which pair of jeans are your favorite.

Another interesting observation I have had scanning all these pictures is what I call the "sinking ship" syndrome, or the Titanic syndrome. Since the Titanic disaster is far away enough in history, we can make funny syndromes out of it. We can get a little chuckle. It'll be like in 30 years when someone on the Dallas Cowboys makes a good tackle on a wide receiver the announcers will say "That guy went down like the Twin Towers!" in reference to the receiver crumpling like a bag of laundry under the steroid-ridden body of a draft pick out of Nebraska. ANYWAY, the sinking ship syndrome is this behavior you see people perform when they are all sitting at tables and trying to pose for a picture. A group of people seated around a three-dimensional object does not make for good two-dimensional photography, so the people on the ends of the table closest to the photographer lean back away from the camera to try to fit in. Because they lean, everyone else at the table leans, until it looks like you're taking a picture on a sinking ship, with everyone going "Whoooa! Hold on! We're sinking! Snap a picture Ted! Snap a fucking pictureeeeee!" It also looks like the pictures that get taken of you at the log ride at Disneyland. As it drops, everyone leans back as if to say "I don't want to go down this waterfall!" But the affirming flash of the camera says "You're going down the waterfall buddy. And here's your proof!"

People should start posting more pictures of meaningful things. The pictures don't have to be good. If you give good context to a badly taken photo, it can still be amazing. I think it would be sweet if some guy took a picture of his old porn collection and titled it "Longest relationship I've ever been in." That's some deep shit. Or a wife who takes a picture of her husband asleep and the caption says "This is the only time I can stand him." People could send some serious messages with their amateur photography, but instead Sassafrass gets slapped into a pink sweater and put on a pair of Barbie doll skis and we get "Sassafrass hits the slopes."