I love photography. For me, it’s like painting, but better. And more accurate. And unlike painting, I can actually participate. I am not a big success or great master by any means. But I enjoy taking pictures. I also enjoy looking at other people work and sometimes sharing it. When I do, this is the category that I use.
One of the things I’m working on during the last year is the ImpreStyle project. Among other things, that pushed me to learn way more about color theory, balance, and coordination. One of the websites that I’m using for inspiration on a daily basis is Design Seeds. That’s where beautiful photography meets color exploration. Have a look at these lovely example of coffee tones.
I think I’ll be sharing more of Design Seeds pictures in the future.
If you’ve recently started using Instagram, like yous truly, you probably wondered how you could make all those pictures available on the web. A sidebar widget on your blog is an option, of course. But if you wanted something more, something more like a traditional gallery, then you need to check out Instagrid. Because that’s exactly what it does – creates an online gallery for your Instagram pictures. Here is mine.
Thanks for a tip from Chris.
If you’ve ever rode a motorcycle while wearing an open face helmet, you know the feeling of strong wind against your face. Now imagine that but with an even stronger wind and a photo camera that captures your facial expressions. That’s what “Blow job” project is all about. I’m sure that’s something a lot of people thought about, but Lithuanian photograph Tadas Černiauskas actually organized. Read more about it and see more funny photos.
Flickr people once again outdid themselves. An update to the design of the single photo page changes things to the better, much better. Now you’ll the image filling almost entirely your screen, instead of a medium-sized thumbnail surrounded by all the navigational clutter. Here is how it looks now.
And for those of you interested in the technical side of the story, there is a blog post explaining all the different challenges. It might even be interesting for non-technical people to read, just to get an idea of how complex some seemingly simple things can be.
Instagram is a very well known service in the iPhone world. But recently an Android application was released as well, so I had to try it. Instagram is basically like Flickr, but for the mobile. With an Instagram app you take a picture and then apply one of a few predefined filters to make that picture look way better than it originally did. Then you upload the picture to Instagram, where other people can see it, comment on it, favorite it, and do all the usual social networking stuff with it.
What makes Instagram awesome a combination of simplicity and and great resulting pictures. I’m not much of a photographer myself, but I am somewhat familiar with image editing in Photoshop and Gimp. And yet if I’d be asked to produce the same results using those powerful programs, I’d be at a loss. It’ll take me days or even weeks to find all the options, plugins, and tweaking necessary. With Instagram, it’s literally just a single click. Of course, Photoshop and Gimp provide for a complete artistic freedom, where Instagram does not, but for mere mortals who just want to snap a quick shot and have it look good – Instagram gives plenty of choice.
The first few days that I tried the app, I didn’t think much of it. But all of a sudden I realized that I’m using it a lot, both for taking pictures and for browsing them. Interestingly, Flickr app for Android has very similar functionality – predefined filters that can be applied right after shooting. The Filters themselves are very similar as well. And yet I find myself using Instagram, even though I have a Flickr account for years now.
I think that’s because Instagram is simpler, faster, and still produces better images. Flickr app has other things in it as well – recent activity, sets, etc. Instagram is very straight-forward. Instagram is also much faster than Flickr. It takes me about half a second to get to the camera with Instagram, and almost three seconds with Flickr. Also, when the images are uploaded, Instagram enforces a smaller size, while Flickr gives user a choice between small, medium, and large. For me, it’s difficult to say “smaller” when a larger option is available (compensating for something?). So I keep choosing “large” and then swearing while waiting for the upload to finish on a slow 3G network.
So, for now, I decided that I’ll be using Instagram a lot with my mobile. Once in a while, I’ll upload all images to my Instagram set on Flickr, since I’m using Flickr as my main storage and backup. But as for Flickr mobile app – it needs to get faster and better before I will switch from Instagram. (Unless, of course, Facebook, which recently acquired Instagram, will screw up the services.)
I’ve also added a widget to the sidebar of this blog, that will cycle through the last 20 or so Instagram pictures of mine. Enjoy!