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.”

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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?

 

Need an Instagram Alternative? This Photo App Has Old-School Filters

So I am ambivalent about the use of camera phones for a means of making photographs. For me they are just too damn random, something which I am sure is part of the appeal to the regular user. I know people who just love Instagram, friends whose FB pages are just awash with rather boring images given a treatment to make them more interesting, my view is take better pictures. Anyway, not one to stand in the face of progress, I am no Canute or Luddite, here is a brief piece about an alternative to Instagram in case you are concerned by the world domination plans of Mark Zuckerberg.

“Many Instagram users decided to delete the app, after news broke of Facebook‘s $1 billion acquisition of the wildly popular photo app, with approximately 30 million users.

Regular smartphone photos may be too muted or rectangular for these former Instagram addicts. Enter Pinweel.

Instagram users expressed their concern with Facebook’s purchase of their favorite photo app due to privacy concerns. On the in-app camera, there is a simple on-screen flash button, one that rotates the frame and 10 beautiful filters to apply, named by years. Filter “1931″ makes square black-and-white photos, while “1987″ outlines photos like a Polaroid. Our favorite is “1999,” which washes frames over with a sunny yellow, orange tinge.

After the picture is taken, you can push it on Facebook or Twitter. You can also share photos with friends and family by creating private and public albums.”....MORE