From our December #Instabros judge Austin Kleon:
How do you judge a contest? You must have criteria, or a criterion. I figured judging a competition for my friends The Butler Bros would be simple: I’d pick the Instagram photos that suggested stories that looked the least like fiction. Photos that were honest, truthful, authentic. Using that criterion, I immediately became skeptical of photos that looked too good. Photos that looked like they were taken by expensive DSLRs and later posted from the phone were out. No easy matter, indeed. In the end, I went with another (way less ambitious) criterion:
I picked the photos I liked.
click images to enlarge
If all photos are posed, this was
the least-posed in the November #instabros batch: a mosh pit at Fun
Fun Fun Fest. It’s rare to find Instagram shots with so much energy—for one thing, something has to be happening, and a lot of times when we Instagram, nothing
is really happening: think of all the lattes and sleeping dogs in your feed…
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Captioned “lonely guy.” What’s his story? Who took the photo? (You never know, the photographer could’ve been dining *with* him, instead of behind him. Wouldn’t that be interesting…) Would I feel the same way about the photo without the caption? Once I read the caption, it’s impossible to know.
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@Vanchocstraw’s bio is accurate:
“a lot of walking the dogs in Austin, Texas,” but I just couldn’t get away from this photo of the Top Notch sign against an Austin sunset. Does it suggest a story? No. Sometimes a photo just looks pretty… and that’s enough.
Congratulations to this month’s winners. Each receives a Butler Bros t-shirt. Keep tagging #Instabros on your Instagrams to enter.
