Marissa's Guide to Indie Kid Photography

If you're an indie kid, or an aspiring indie kid, you know how important photography is to your image. You can spend all the time in the world at Whole Foods, record stores, and independent film festivals, but if you don't have photographs documenting those events, you might as well hang up your slouchy hat and leave behind your indie kid-ness forever. I know leaving that isn't your cup of tea or free trade coffee, so I've assembled a fool-proof guide to indie kid photography.

Marissa's Fool-Proof Guide to Indie Kid Photography

1. Indie kid photography is all about idealism. Just keep that in mind.
2. Don't use mainstream words when referring to your photography. Go ahead and purge words like "picture" from your vocabulary; replace them with words such as "photo" or "still image."
3. The type of camera you use is important, but mostly just for the purposes of name-dropping and mirror shots. For such purposes, just keep the acronym BOB in mind while shopping: Bigger. Older. Better. For any other purposes, any type of camera will do.
4. Color is important. Just remember rule # 1. Make sure you set your camera to any color besides "normal." Another option is editing your photos after you snap them. Vintage color is the best, but even just fading the normal color a little bit will do. Black and white is okay in moderation.
5. You can't photograph just anything, but there are a lot of objects and scenes that aren't off indie kid limits. Examples include concerts, indie friends, antique cars, your outfit for the day, record players, wheat fields, and anything related to owls.
6. Photos aren't actually worth a thousand words, so you'll need to add a few (preferably in a small white font... you know what I'm talking about). Obscure, dramatic-but-not-profound lyrics from obscure, dramatic-but-not-profound bands work best, but book quotes are fine too, like that one from Perks of Being a Wallflower about that time when the photo wasn't just a memory and the people in it had just eaten lunch or something.
7. Your photos need to be shared; that's pretty much the whole point of taking them. Facebook and Twitter work fine for that purpose, and Tumblr is good too. Just get them out there so people can marvel at your talent and how cool you are.

That's not so bad, right? Just follow these rules, and I know you'll be the coolest indie kid on the block in no time. Let me know how it works out for you.

Snap on, indie kid, snap on.

Marissa Lanae