Shooting from the Hipstamatic

Award-winning photojournalist Antonio Olmos recalls how he unlocked his iPhone’s app-titude on a trip to the city of Derry writes in The Guardian

A mural commemorating 1969’s Battle of the Bogside

Reluctance has been one of the themes of my career. I began shooting on black-and-white film and would have been happy for things to stay that way. I remember my reluctance to shoot in colour as more publications began demanding it. Next, I was asked to digitally scan my negatives rather than submit prints. Then they asked me to shoot digital images – and it took me a long time to accept that the quality of digital images equalled that of film.

Now along comes the smartphone. Like the first digital cameras, the quality of the first smartphone shots was awful. But they kept improving, and soon I was snapping most of my family photos with the iPhone; it was liberating not to be burdened with a professional SLR on outings. As the image quality improved, I was soon doing street photography projects on the iPhone; I could see that its various photo apps created opportunities to tell stories in a new visual way. writes Antonio Olmos…..

One of the problems I have with creative photographic processes and smartphone photo filters is that they are nostalgic, and place the aesthetic over the content. They also seem to surrender a large part of the creative process to the camera program……in the end, the only thing that matters is the final photograph; how one reached it is not so important.

Read the full article in the Guardian here

the Hipstamatic Tintype app captures the wintry light of Bogside, Derr

Hipstamatic plans launch of Foundation for Photojournalism

Hipstamatic plans to open the Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism to “support photographic storytellers” who use smartphones to tell their stories, BJP can reveal writes Olivier Laurent

Synthetic, maker of the popular Hipstamatic application for iPhone, is expected to launch, later this year, a pack of digital lenses and films dedicated to photojournalists to raise funds for its newly created Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism.

 The Foundation will help educate and support “the next generation of photographic storytellers using smartphones with Hipstamatic to tell and broadcast their tales”, as the Foundation’s Facebook page reads.

In an interview with BJP in October 2011, Synthetic’s CEO, Lucas Allen Buick, explained: “The idea behind it is to create an educational platform, where professionals will be able give some of their time to educate up-and-coming photographers on how to go into Libya, for example, and not get shot.”

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2193262/hipstamatic-plans-launch-of-foundation-for-photojournalism#ixzz21IeJr16R

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Has Instagram made everyone’s photos look the same?

From the BBC

“Instagram, the photo app, has been sold to Facebook for $1bn. But has it sparked a wave of generic retro-looking snaps, asks photographer Stephen Dowling. Instagram – and its bedfellows such as Hipstamatic, Camerabag and Picplz – have brought to digital photography a fever for a certain style of imagery. Smartphone photos are given saturated colours and Polaroid-style borders, dark vignettes, light leaks and lens flare like those that plagued the Kodak moments of previous generations. It may be 2012, but popular photography hasn’t looked like this since the early 1970s.

The trend began a few years ago with Hipstamatic, an app which apes the look of lo-fi toy cameras. Now Instagram allows a pic to be taken on your smartphone, a digital “filter” to be applied, and the resulting pic made viewable to the site’s ever-increasing community. Chances are that that artfully retro pic of a display of cupcakes your friend showed you at the weekend was an Instagram pic.”

Continue reading the main story

Before and after…

Applying Instagram’s X-Pro II filter to the image for a more “vintage” feel

“Launched in March 2010, Instagram took until the end of that year to notch up its millionth user but from there its ascent was dizzying. Just 15 months later there are more than 30 million account holders and a billion pictures on the site’s servers. That’s a lot of cupcakes.

Instagram’s use of filters mimics some of the processes photographers used to push photographic boundaries – such as the super-saturated colours created cross-processing slides in negative chemicals, or using expired film’s palette of soft, muted colours, or playing around with camera settings or darkroom equipment to boost contrast.”.…..MORE…….

I think this conclusion is where my thoughts lie..

“The ability to turn an everyday pic into something “artistic” at the click of a button is the very embodiment of digital photography’s curse of convenience – no long learning curves, or trial and error with expensive rolls of film. But is it creative?

Writer and photographer Kate Bevan doesn’t think so.

“Do I think it’s artistically valid? No. I think it kills the creative instinct. However, I do love sharing and I understand the mindset that wants to make his or her pics stand out, even though Instagram does the opposite of that.” The first time one sees a picture with an Instagram-type filter applied, it might be impressive. But the thousandth time? “I’m all in favour of people experimenting with pictures, and I’d never be elitist about photography,” suggests Bevan. “But I don’t think it encourages experimentation – it encourages the use of lazy one-click processing.”..…..MORE

What do you think?

 

An Introduction to Lomography

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing.  Born out of a love for the Russian based LC-A camera manufactured by state run LOMO, the Austrian based, Lomographische AG is the company that produces a handful of cameras now that live by their funky effects and designs.

In a hobby that’s almost all digital, Lomography is all film based and has a huge following, one that seems to continue to grow.  While iPhone apps like Hipstamatic are extremely popular they simply don’t have the romance that film cameras can. Loading film, choosing which shots you will take, having the film processed and waiting for prints to be made is extremely

One of the main purposes of Lomography is to encourage snapshot photography.  While most people work on becoming more professional with their photography, the goal of Lomography is to have fun shooting, then enjoy whatever comes out…...more