How to create aesthetic photos
Social media to consume in picnic fashion
Hey, I’m Bonnie and welcome to my Friday newsletter. Each week I share insight into the art of being photogenic, including how to pose, what to wear—fashionable style, makeup—and a lot of whatnot that may benefit your photo. Why, because you can do all that with a phone camera.
You’ll want to get in on the Pinterest aesthetic. You want to do that because it’s a veritable renaissance. I know. They told you Pinterest created the aesthetic movement of its own. But it happened before. See Oscar Wilde. Pinterest’s aestheticism is amusingly similar to, and different from, the aesthetic movement with Wilde as its leader. Dreamy youths in knee breeches languished, their soulful eyes on books of poetry. Crying for sensitivity, their motto was “art for art's sake."
This treatment of Pinterest might intrigue art historians and literary scholars. But it might also annoy aesthetic users of Pinterest, who turn to its boards for entertainment and inspiration, not to witness the kind of flyspecking of multiple versions of the same idea that they see plenty of in their social media. On the other hand, it might be good to know, actually, imitation is the sincerest form of creativity.
A common misconception relates originality to the forms of creativity. In point of fact, there are few absolutely original ideas. Most of what appears novel is just old stuff recycled in an epic simile like lines of Virgil’s Aeneid written in the gaps left by Homer between the Iliad and Odyssey. Creativity thus is the ability to see connections and relationships where others have not. You could say, history repeats itself in art history.
In contrast, we have the conception of art. The idea of beauty, skill, and taste is about as far as many people seem to get in their understanding of art. Taste is a matter of personal preference in aesthetic matters. We can say that a person has traditional tastes or avant-garde tastes or eclectic (read varied or broad) tastes. We can even claim a person has no taste, meaning someone who lacks the interest or awareness to respond to visual material.
All considered one by one, your tastes, your ideas, your doings each divide this beauty. This all is so as to permit yourself a certain license of treatment, the better to round out the picture. We are all free to like or dislike what we will on grounds of personal taste. However, unless one can lay claim to a high level of expertise, it is rather immoderate to condemn art as “a piece of work” one doesn’t like. The comedy was furnished by the film Step Brothers in which Rob Riggle can’t say what it is or why he’s of a mind to tell Will Ferrell, “change your face.” It is important for an artist to understand this distinction and even more so for a designer, who will surely be called on to do creative work within the framework of public tastes and ideas.
The elements and principles of design compose an adverb of quality in terms of art or else you just have a POS. (POS is “part of speech,” obv.) But the term design has become a meaningless buzzword for selling anything from designer jeans to designer drugs, software designed for office or function and snacks designed to boost energy (as of added calories). The term designer for many of us has come to mean attractively presented or fashioned, or merely trendy.
For the purpose of this writing, however, the rational, planned character of the word design is most relevant. And therefore the following definition is offered:
Design is the PROCESS of SELECTING and ORGANIZING elements or components in order to fulfill a specified purpose.
This purpose may be functional or aesthetic or (frequently) both. Note that this describes a rational approach to the creative act, and stresses process—a method for solving problems that involves choice and planning. This definition is very much focused on the goal or purpose to be achieved through this process. Aesthetic and expressive issues may play a part in this process, but they are not the only possibility, and may not even be important parts of the design process in some situations. For example, if a marine engineer seeks to design an improvement in an exhaust system on a steamer, its function, but not its appearance, is the issue. However, in designing a dress or a lamp, appearance is often even more important than function—and may even be the function.
Whether you want to be designer of visual material or a consumer, it is critical to raise consciousness of what really is at stake in terms of art we can understand and control as design and aesthetic approaches.
You could swear by the sailor’s blasphemy to take the curse off the aesthetes’ la-di-da. After you gave them the big go-by, then what? Join the study of sleepwalkers acting out some fantastic Freudian charade of their own illusions. Well, if an almost transparent pretense is your thing, you’ll love Pinterest. It really is a charade. You get to guess the aesthetic from a word represented in riddling verse (or by picture, tableau, or dramatic action (as intrusion represented by depiction of inn, true, and shun). Also, pic and Nick is, you guessed it—picnic. True story, BTW, a picture of a rando seated at a kitchen table and chair outdoors, I presume her name was Nicole, as per the charade. No one living through a renaissance likely dreamt of being left in the dark ages. Nor do we.
Pinterest is a tool that is highly valued but poorly understood. An unusually winning prologue characterized by those possessing academic learning and the erudite but nonacademic is observed by a kind of mental flexibility that begets self-originating creativity. Even a broken clock can reliably tell time twice a day, amirite? Not forgetting the time your phone developed into such a reality 🕰️ 10 minutes past 10. Lo and behold, a time-telling emoji clock. Who woulda thunk it? (Hopefully, none of us.)
Pinterest has no truck with time personified, not even an old man who is bald, bearded, and holding a scythe and water jar or sometimes an hourglass (Father Time) which to me is fine because a happy ending is morally and aesthetically satisfying.
I should stick to the aesthetic and skip the timeworn listicle of 10 or 20 best of this or trendiest that. Given the space constraint, I’d have to give each short shrift anyways. You could search the Web and sift through all 9,979 “best aesthetic such and such”—opposed to do the analog of Google image search for inspo on Pinterest. Let’s not and say we did … a better idea. Suppose I explain what you’re actually looking to do in the process then pick one aesthetic that is timely and doable and show you how to get it right. And if you like this design and aesthetic approach, you just tell me. Leave a comment, and I will do more—whatever you like: summer festival, fall harvest, pretty princess, county fair, dreamscape, garden party, moody autumn, academic chic, forest nymph, forest punk (there are zillions).