16-1-1

iPhone pictures. It's terrible, because it's zoomed, and the crop is digital, not optical, and it becomes grainy, and an iPhone app filter makes it look like an iPhone app filtered photograph. Is that any worse than a Kodak Disc camera photo? Or a Polaroid? Or any other number of processes that affect outcome? It's new, it's digital, and it doesn't have to look like this, but it does. And it does because I zoomed in to a focal length that I wanted for the composition I wanted. Does the means justify the deterioration? When I squint I like the photo a lot. When I consider how much better the photo might have been if I had my big fancy camera with the big, long lens on it I think it's terrible, but no worse than any other terrible photo that gets heralded on Instagram. It's no worse than a Bob Ross painting, and a Bob Ross painting is amazingly awful. Or amazing despite. Or just amazing, regardless. Bob Ross was prolific, but not brilliant, but I'd hang one of his paintings on my wall. And I guess I'm posting this photo, so...

But I'm posting this one too:

Because it's better. It's a metaphor, it's an analogy, it's literal and allegorical. It's a photo of two trees, or parts of two trees, side by each, paired but independent. And more.

Or it's just two trees. Literally, that would be true.

But that would be boring.