Photo Friday: Tyler Anderson

A Study In Instagram

Photography is something I only do as a hobby, but I love being able to find subject material in my every day life. As a result, one of my favorite iPhone apps is Instagram. Below are a few of my favorite photos, and here are the stories that go with them.

1. One night I looked in my fridge and discovered I was low on, well, pretty much everything. All I had was some root beer and some ice cream (I'm not even kidding on this). I despaired, but only for a moment, when the brilliant idea to make ROOT BEER FLOATS suddenly sprang to mind. Thus, a delicious yet unhealthy dinner was had, and Tyler was happy.

2. I've always been envious of photographers that can take good beach shots. I've tried and tried over and over again, and am never happy with the result. Finally, this year on my spring break trip, I got a shot that made me overcome with how much I liked it. This is that picture.

3. Always a fan of the rare and unpopular, seeing this VW van in my university's parking lot made me immediately lust after it, while simultaneously making me loathe my "common" Mazda Tribute. I had to take a shot and I had to put an old filter on it, just so I could live vicariously through the photo for a while.

4. Brian Williams came to talk at my school's senior convocation this year. I was able to be good for almost all of the talk, but finally at the end I could stand it no longer, and snuck my phone out for a quick shot. I was so close, I had to do it, right?

5. This is another shot from spring break 2011. The shot is pretty grainy and blurry, being taken in bad lighting conditions, but I actually liked the low-fi way it turned out, and how the lighting frames my friends singing on stage.

6. My roommate and I have an ongoing deal: We take turns buying beers, trying to see how obscure and crazy we can get with our choices. I saw this at our local Lowe's Foods and couldn't resist. Being from the Minnesota region, I had to get a brew from the Great Lakes company!

7. *Sigh* As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, I'm a member of a fraternity. Everyone once in a while I get what some of my brothers call (un-ironically, mind you) fratriotic. For those of you who are normal people, that's patriotic with a "frat" shoved in at the beginning. Anyway, one morning I woke up with a fierce fratriocity (I don't even know, I'm just making up words now) and took this photo.

8. My university's (Elon University in North Carolina) campus is absolutely gorgeous, and that's coming from a not-so-outdoorsy person. Still, walking past this flower bed, I had to take a shot. It was simply too pretty not to.

9. I've never really enjoyed photos of text, and I've also never liked the horrendous Instagram border that can be found in this final photo. Despite this, somehow these things I dislike came together in a wonderful photo of the back cover of a Paul Simon lyric book that I have. Looking at the back of the book caused inspiration to strike, and it's quickly become one of my favorite photos.

Tyler Anderson is an iOS/Mac software developer at the Iconfactory. You can find him on Twitter under the username @TandyQ and you can sometimes read thoughtful stuff from him on Tumblr (http://tandyq.tumblr.com) or his personal blog (http://tqanderson.com/blog).