Facebook Ruined The High School Reunion

With my 10 year high school reunion coming up, I've been thinking a lot about how new technology affects us and everything around us. From the way we do business, to the way we shop, technology changes us. Even the high school reunion has been changed by technology.

Prior to the days of Facebook, the high school reunion was a true reunion. People from your class would all gather up and meet somewhere and everyone would catch up on what they had been doing for the past 10 years. Not everyone would attend, but a lot of your classmates would be there. Many of these classmates you haven't heard from in 10 years. You go to your reunion and there are your old buddies that you spend a lot of time catching up with. Then you have the people that you kind of knew, but weren't real close with, but you catch up with them out of politeness and curiosity. Then you have the people you really don't know at all, but end up catching up with them anyways.

Things were a lot different back then. Now cut to Facebook. Roughly half of your friends on Facebook are people you went to high school with. You have your old buddies that you catch up with regularly on Facebook. Then you have the classmates that you kind of knew, but weren't real close with, but you catch up with them anyways. You get to find out where they're at, where they work, who they're married to and their kids' names. You also have the people you really didn't know at all in high school, but due the the lack of awkwardness associated with face-to-face conversations and the freedom of wall posts and comments, you even catch up with them.

Facebook has taken the reunion out of the high school reunion and ruined it. No longer will high school reunions be filled with catching up and meeting the significant others. Now you show up at the reunion and you already know everything about everyone that you went to high school with. You can walk up to a classmate you never knew and say "Hey, I know we never spoke in high school, but judging by your status updates and the pics of your Disneyland vacation, it looks like things are going great for you! Oh, and I also saw that you took the quiz on which Sesame Street character are you and you're Grover. I'm totally Grover, too!" Thanks to Facebook, the only purpose of a high school reunion now is to stand around awkwardly and try to remember the lyrics to Hootie and the Blowfish, because it will get sung.

Also, thanks to Facebook, you can forget about surprises. 10 years ago you might have a high school reunion and have someone you haven't seen in 10 years show up and shock everyone in attendance. Like when the morbidly obese kid shows up and he's been eating Subway and now he is skinny or when the ugly girl shows up and she's now modeling. Thanks to Facebook, there are no more surprises. Now when the fat kid shows up and is skinny, everyone gives him a quick glance and says "Yeah, yeah, yeah...I saw your pics the other day. You're skinny now. Great job!"

Facebook has become a high school reunion in itself. A high school reunion that never ends. You get to catch up with EVERYONE you went to school with at your convenience and you don't have to put up with shitty music or name tags. So now when you go to your high school reunion and already know everything about everyone, you can focus on more important things like coming up with an excuse to leave.

iPhone and photos

I recently decided to switch cell service. I was on Alltel, but after Verizon purchased Alltel, my service and customer service drastically decreased. After being told that if I wanted decent service and support, I would have to purchase a new phone at full price, I decided to take my business elsewhere. So I recently made the switch to AT&T and purchased an iPhone.

Since the switch, I have been thoroughly impressed with not just the app store, but all of the photo related apps as well. I admit that I used to think the "There's an app for that." marketing campaign was kind of cheesy. In reality there really is an app for everything...including managing your blog.

I'd like to share some of the better photo apps that I have used since I made my way into iPhone land:

Photogene
CameraBag
ColorSplash
Photonasis 2.0
101+ PhotoEffects

ColorSplash is one of my favorite apps since I am a fan of selective color. It allows you to easily create great looking selective color photos.


-- Post From My iPhone

New Photos Added To The Gallery

New photos have been added to the Gallery. I have used one of Zenfolio's built in features to create this slideshow. To order prints, visit the "Added August 3, 2009" collection in the gallery.

Welcome to the 4th redesign!

Throughout the years, my photography site has undergone many, many changes. This is the 4th official redesign (I think). It originally started out as just a gallery for my photography. Later, I started blogging. Finally, I decided to incorporate all of my various sites into one site for everything. So here we are...blog and photo gallery. Here are some of the changes that have taken place over the years:

• I began using Zenfolio to host my gallery. They are an amazing website that allows me to sort and display my images in a professional looking gallery. It also allows me to make certain galleries private. This works out well for any friends or clients looking for a little more privacy on their photos.
• The other great thing about Zenfolio is it allows for ordering of prints through Mpix. Mpix is a great online photo lab with great products. One of my main reasons for choosing Zenfolio was their choice in using Mpix for their products/lab. When prints are ordered and shipped, Mpix packs them extremely well so that they arrive without any damage or other problems.
• With all this talk about Mpix being great, one can only assume that I'm getting a kickback. Wrong. I have waived my profit margins, so all prices have 0% markup. This keeps pricing extremely low. The economy sucks, so I'm helping out.
• This new blog will contain everything from day-to-day nonsense to photo tips or behind the scenes for photo shoots.

That's all for now. Be sure to check out the gallery and check back for more updates!