18 September 2011

Ukuleles and Places.



I love ukuleles. Because lets be honest, I am not really at all proficient on the guitar. And ukes are much more portable than pianos. I love playing them, that they have 4 strings, you can bar chords, and that when you play even a wrong chord it still sounds, you know, not like a cat is dying.

I could spend hours talking about the brilliance of playing ukuleles. But today I'm going to talk about the (somewhat hipstery, sorry) theme of photos, and how ukuleles greatly enhance photos.

First, lets think about why we take photos. There are three main reasons:

1) To show the world where you've been (facebook profiles, sign photos, tourists, etc)

2) To be creative, and capture the beauty of the photography subject.

3) To hear the shutter sound of the super beautiful Nikon cameras that I dream about. (Yes, I understand this could be just me. But its seriously the MOST AMAZING SOUND IN THE WORLD.)

Usually, these three goals are supposed to be simultaneously met. Because I don't know anyone who wants to hide the location of the beautiful photo they took, or to be really ugly and uncreative in a photo showing where they went on summer vacation. And shutter sounds are inevitable.

This is where ukes come in. Take pensive photos: looking into the distance, communicating your deep thoughts to the great unknown. But in reality (unless you are Angelina Jolie or Brett Dennen) you just look something like this (Exhibit A):
Awkward pensive photo
Which nobody really wants on their facebook profile anyways.

Add a uke, though, and the whole pensive idea is achieved so much more. Exhibit B:

much less awkward!
And don't think that its just because of the cool background! Because even in gorgeous areas, with good photography, your hands are always hanging limply at your sides, silently longing to hold a small stringed instrument. (Exhibit C):

The arms are saying "We want ukes! We want ukes!"

Ukes jazz up any old photo. For instance, the overtaken photo of "Tourist, next to large pumpkin at county fair" receives a whole new light in the warm glow of the uke (Exhibit D):
Tourists, awed by the combined glory of ukuleles and large gourds
Here are some other uke photos. I'm sure you'll agree that, without the uke, they'd be way less awesome. (Exhibits E-I)






Thank you to Ley, Katherine, and Zayn  for their photography. And whoever took that photo of me and Elika in my English class...