Today in Instagram: Errol Morris and Werner Herzog Hug Under a Rainbow

The wonders of amateur photography, Telluride Film Festival edition

Tom Quinn is a film distributor at RADiUS, one of the divisions of The Weinstein Company. In that capacity, Quinn found himself, earlier this week, at the Telluride Film Festival -- an event attended by several filmmakers, among them the legendary documentarians Errol Morris and Werner Herzog.

At the event, Tom Quinn also found himself carrying the kind of perma-camera that so many of us tote around with us every day. Which meant that, when Quinn encountered Herzog and Morris on a Telluride street -- both together and, delightfully, under a rainbow -- he had the tools to capture all the awesomeness. And he was able to use those tools to share the awesomeness with the rest of us.

The image above, from Quinn's Instagram, is pretty much the unicorn of celebrity photos. It's a classic of the star-ensemble genre, along the lines of Gárcia Márquez and Fuentes and Morrison seated together on a couch, or, less literarily, of Bynes and Cyrus posing together at a party. Except: This picture was not staged. It was posed only in the most impromptu sense. It exists only because of smartphones and Instagram and Internet -- and because Tom Quinn happened to be at the right place at the right time, with a rainbow above him and a camera-phone in his pocket.

Via Slate