If there is one piece of photographic knowledge that everyone on earth knows, it’s that taking pictures of people on railroad tracks automatically makes said people way cooler. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen Facebook pictures of angst-y teens taking dramatic pictures of themselves walking down the local railroad tracks all ‘lost in their own thoughts’, I would have enough nickels to fill a pillowcase and break one of the Ten Commandments. I’m not sure what makes these metal transportation pathways so goddamn iconic and edgy. Perhaps it’s because they are dangerous. Kids are rebellious these days. They would like nothing more than to put back a couple 0.5% beers, get buzzed off white board markers, then go waltzing across literal deathtraps with the camera they got for their 14th birthday clutched in-hand.
“Okay, you just go down there and I’ll stay here, then you just like… look over into that direction and pretend that you’re thinking.”
One press of the shutter button and one brain-dead teenager becomes a figurative Nostradamus in the eyes of all his peers. It’s not enough to just take the picture, oh no. One would be so severely ridiculed that the next trip to the train-tracks would be a messy, messy suicide. Aforementioned picture must first go through the grueling transformations of no less than six different pirated-Photoshop filters, accompanied by a coloured font that must be quoting mildly relevant song lyrics as well as miscellaneous punctuation that seems to be accidentally added onto the end.
There you have it. Through the magic of Photoshop and the total lack of design knowledge, millions of teens around the world have turned angsty amateur teen photos that suck into angsty amateur teen photos that suck even more.
amazing photography