I like to think I'm at least rounding the techie curve, but Instagram has me at a loss.

I get on Facebook and Pinterest and half a dozen of my friends have loaded pics via Instagram's app. At first I thought it was just a quirky way to make photos look old... like the Polaroid instant pics in my childhood photo albums.

Klearchos Guide to the Galaxy

Um, yeah, okay. And why do I want to regress to Polaroid Instamatic quality photos when I can digitally manipulate my pictures in seconds with Gimp or any other free photo editors online? Heck, a few years back I merged pictures so we had ONE family Christmas photo where child #4 wasn't making a goofy face. Oldest son is still angry with me for "fixing" his teeth, and youngest thinks it's weird I did a cut-and-paste job on his head to create a picture I could live with. Deal with it, kid.


I loaded the Instagram app on my iPhone months ago, I just haven't figured out why using it is preferable to using the regular camera app for recording my day to day photos. Not that I'm a big picture-taker anyway, but I'm beginning to think Instagram is a photo app for the beautiful people... People who aren't compelled to digitally whiten teeth, blur wrinkles, and erase the dog taking a dump from their family barbecue photos (you know who you are).

So, for all you Instagram fans, what am I missing?