An Instagram Series: Life With SMS

Not even a year ago, I was complaining about how Instagram was a terrible, horrible creation, yet another device that was fooling people into thinking they were now professional photographers by turning these mediocre lo-res snapshots into little works of art with light and magic with just one click of a filter, and so I refused to use it. REFUSED! Once I finally joined, by some good hard strong arming and convincing from some friends, I was immediately sucked into it, the intimacy of sharing daily photos this way took me by surprise, all of the sudden I felt like I was sharing way more about our life through micro-blogging and photo sharing than I ever had on my blog. I fell in love with story telling through images, and found a brand new community of people, new stories, and found myself constantly inspired by the creativity on display. I started to take managing my Instagram grid really serious, and would make sure to consider what was taken before, and ask myself did this next picture compliment that, did it continue the story in some way? Needless to say, I got crazy about it. I have since balanced all of the new enthusiasm out, but I am constantly impressed with what people are doing with their phones, and the stories they are managing to tell. I keep waiting to get tired of it, and instead just fall more in love with it the longer I am on. Its like having access to thousands of documentaries playing at once. So I decided that I wanted to start telling a new story, I wanted to show a different side of our life by giving people a window into what living with SMS actually looks like. Last week, after much discussion with Cole, I started a series called: "Life With SMS" and if you are on Instagram you can find and follow the series by using the hashtag: #lifewithsmsIf you are a new reader here, SMS stands for Smith Magenis Syndrome and it is a rare genetic disorder-- partial deletions in the 17th chromosome that lead to a laundry list of delays and developmental issues, and a pretty gnarly laundry list of symptoms that become life long struggles. The Littlest Buddy was diagnosed with SMS in March of 09 and it changed everything for us, the more we dove in and read about SMS, the more we could understand LB. We devoured anything we could get our hands on about it, and it has made it so we can improve upon strategies, and build new ones for him. Education and awareness is key, like it is with everything. The more people that know about SMS, the better. all photos shot on iPhone 4s and uploaded through InstagramThese are just a few shots from the series, if you want to see the rest and follow along, you can find me on Instagram by my username: @thepanicroom and follow the series along by searching #lifewithsms and you can also find Cole on there too, @colemarshall