Week 1 in the books!
2/365: Shoes
3/365: Cold
4/365: Red, White Or Blue
5/365: Love
6/365: Fave Smell
7/365: Where You Are
The next 7 themes:
8. Path
9. 3 Things
10. Smooth
11. I Wore This!
12. A Bad Habit
13. 4 O’Clock
14. Edible
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen all these images.
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen all these images.
If you are my Friend on Foursquare, you’ve seen most of these images.
If you are my “Friend” on Facebook, you’ve seen some of these images.
If you are my Contact on Flickr, you’ve seen some of these images.
If you follow me on Tumblr, you’ve seen a few of these images.
These are Instagram images from March and April:
This picture legitimately freaks me out.
A Brave New World
I can’t wait to see what I did in May and June!
After years and years of talking about it, I finally removed my carpet from my great room and finished the floor while I was on a vacation. It was a multi-day project that involved several days of just removing furniture and I’m still in the process of putting furniture back in, although some of the furniture has been downsized.
Here are some photos of the process:
Before the process began.
Before the process began.
Before the process began.
Random picture of my WB Joe!
End of Day 1
End of Day 1
End of Day 1
End of Day 1
End of Day 2
End of Day 2
End of Day 2
End of Day 3
End of Day 3
End of Day 3
End of Day 3
Ready for Finish
Ready for Finish
Ready for Finish
Ready for Finish
Naima, frustrated by the process.
Done
Done
Done
I’d like to thank my amazing floor crew. In particular, Carla and Jesse that helped a ton. Carla came over at midnight to help put on the last coat of finish, which was pretty amazing. But also:
My Mom was also a big help by giving Naima and I a place to crash while the finish dried and the fumes were at their most toxic.
Now that this project is complete (almost), the painting of the house seems so much more doable. Plus, it will require a larger crew. Not that I’m trolling for volunteers…
This Personal Photo Project was to photograph the flowers my Mom and I planted at the Photography 139 Studio that I had purchased from the Northwest Greenhouse.
The rest of the Planted Series:
Most of my flower beds are getting pretty full. I need to start digging up more ground. Fortunately, Naima is a tremendous digger. Just in all the wrong locations.
Pixlr Express is the best photo editing phone app I’ve come across to date. It has way more functionality than I could ever show examples for, so I’ll just show some screen captures to show how much functionality it has:
“Effects” are basically what every other app calls filters. What you can’t tell in this screen shot is that each of the options just opens up a bunch other options. At least 10 per option.
Once again, each of the overlay options is just a category of at least 10 more options. There are at least 10 different types of Fireworks overlays. Some of these overlays are pretty worthless, but it is nice have so many options.
Not pictures is the Borders menu. Once again, there are tons and tons of border options.
Once again, I wouldn’t have much use adding text to images, but it is nice that again there are a ton of different text options.
Stickers is a function I wouldn’t have any use for, but if it is the type of thing you are into, there are literally over a hundred different options.
In the end, you can come up with an image such as this:
This is a phone app that has more functionality than many desktop programs. Almost every function has options as well. All the filter effects can be faded, for example.
By far and away, the most popular photo sharing phone app is Instagram. The popularity is almost staggering. 100 million monthly ACTIVE users. 40 million photos per day. 8500 “Likes” per second. 1000 comments per second. It isn’t any wonder why Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars last year.
When it comes to sharing a photo with as many people as possible, there just flat out isn’t any competition for Instagram.
Instagram can simultaneously post a photo to:
Although I personally wouldn’t consider all of their filters usable, Instagram boasts 20 unique filters. Like Flickr, the names aren’t particularly useful, but unlike Flickr, you can scan through them fairly quickly:
Plus Instagram comes with a photo enhancement feature that actually does change the appearance of an image.
A look at Instagram’s filter options:
Normal. Enhanced.
Amaro
Amaro Enhanced
Mayfair
Mayfair Enhanced
Rise
Rise Enhanced
Hudson
Hudson Enhanced
Valencia
Valencia Enhanced
X Pro
X Pro Enhanced
Sierra
Sierra Enhanced
Willow
Willow Enhanced
Lo Fi
Lo Fi Enhanced
Early Bird
Early Bird Enhanced
Sutro
Sutro Enhanced
Toaster
Toaster Enhanced
Brannan
Brannan Enhanced
Inkwell
Inkwell Enhanced
Walden
Walden Enhanced
Hefe
Hefe Enhanced
Nashville
Nashville Enhanced
1977
1977 Enhanced
Kelvin
Kelvin Enhanced
One bonus (you may have noticed) with Instagram is that some of the filters have a frame you can toggle on and off. Some of the frames are actually a bonus, a few don’t really need to exist. What is disappointing is that you can’t mix and match frames. Each frame is assigned to a filter. It can’t be used for any other filter. More customization would be a plus, but since frames ultimately aren’t that useful, it isn’t a big miss.
The biggest con of Instagram is that you can only create square images. There is no other aspect ratio available. There is a commitment to theme that I respect, but this stubbornness has resulted in a cottage industry of third party apps to take rectangular images and making them square for publishing in Instagram.
Another negative of Instagram is that out of the app home, you can only use their camera. This might be a plus on a phone with a lesser camera app, it is a negative on a higher end phone. A plus for their camera app is that you can use the backwards face camera on your phone if it is so enabled. The Instagram camera is a decent camera app, but really only has the option of using or not using flash.
This is only a slight negative because you can use any camera app and then upload any picture into Instagram.
A positive of Instagram is that it saves Instagram images at a decent size. 2448×2448 on my phone. I could easily print decent sized pictures from that size. I’ve seen plenty of cool decorating ideas on the web with people printing their Instagrams. Another positive is that it saves its images in its own album, so you don’t have to go poking through another album for your images.
Another nice editing feature of Instagram is that it allows you to blur your pictures to emphasize your subject. There are two options. You can either circle blur or line blur. What is really nice about this feature is that you can control the size, placement, and orientation of the blurs.
Line Blur
Another nice feature of Instagram is hashtagging. A feature that Twitter has really hung its hat on and that Facebook has been scrambling to try to figure out how to steal. By place a “#” in front of a word, you have hashtagged it. Making it a link to all similarly hashtagged pictures.
However, by far and away my favorite toy part of Instagram is the photo map. You have the option of putting any of your pictures onto your photo map. It is a great way to remember where images were taken, or just to mark, in a tangible way, all the places you have visited. While you won’t be able to tell from my medium range screen shot of my photo map, I have left central Iowa. You also won’t be able to tell the accuracy of the photo map. It will place that photo pretty much precisely on the block where you took the image.
In fact, the Instagram photo map might be my favorite thing in all of social media.
A slight negative of the photo map is that you have to place the picture on the photo map when you take the picture, you can’t place it on the photo map later, like you can in Flickr’s photo map.
Flickr used to be one of the most popular imaging websites, but then it began to falter a little bit. It hoped to make a bit of a resurgence when there was the big to-do (which was really much to do about nothing) about Instagram changing their privacy policies to match Facebook’s privacy policies. Flickr introduced their own Phone App complete with, you guessed it, filters.
Flickr had the advantage over Twitter in actually being an imaging website, but I think their foray into the filter world is actually worse.
The Flickr app does come with its own camera, which is decidedly worse than most default phone camera apps. So thankfully, it does give you the option of choosing between their camera or your default camera. However, part of the problem with the Flickr app is that its navigation is so painful. If you want to upload a photo to Flickr that already resides in your gallery, you can’t do that from the main screen. You have to navigate to their camera, and then select one of the options on the camera screen. This seems like a ridiculous way to do things.
The Flickr camera has next to zero control options.
Another drawback of the app is that their filter names don’t give you any kind of clue what it is that they are going to do to your image until you select them. They are inexplicably named after cities:
I know this sticks with a theme of Flickr’s but it is still somewhat frustrating. Something that makes it even more frustrating is that it is extremely slow in applying the filter effects. My phone as one of the most robust processors on the market and it still takes several seconds to apply the filter. An eternity if I’m just trying to quickly capture an “artistic” phone rendering of a tenderloin in St. Olaf, Iowa.
One other drawback is that there are no other editing features besides filters. No cropping. No auto-“enhancing”, of images.
A look at the filters:
Beijing
Berlin
Cairo
Java
Miami
NYC
Paris
Rome
Sydney
Tokyo
It isn’t all negative with this app though. Flickr does save the images at a decent size of 1632×1224. It will simultaneously upload your image to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It will also let you share your image via email. Which is a nice little addition.
Flickr also is pretty nifty at navigating around their website from inside the app. That is probably the app’s biggest strength is navigation and not in creation.
Now that I’m returning to photography, (thanks 4 people that noticed!) I wanted to take a little bit of time and look at a few of the phone apps that are out there for Android phones. Instagram made filters extremely popular in the social media realm and caused even larger social media outlets like Twitter try their hand at filters.
Twitter Filters hasn’t made much of a dent to Instagram as far as I can tell. I don’t know anybody that uses them and I know very few people that know that they even exist. Twitter Filters has the setback of only being able to post to Twitter, where Instagram can post to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, and Tumblr.
However, if you only want to post a picture to Twitter, Twitter Filters aren’t without their positives.
Twitter Filters have 8 unique filters:
You can also “auto-enhance” your images, before your post it. This function can change the look of an image quite a bit, but depending on the filter, it doesn’t change the image at all.
Twitter Filters automatically scale the image to 816 x612. If you really love an image you have created, you won’t be able to print it. At least you won’t be able to print a large image. Although, I’m not sure how many people would be doing that any way.
You can also Scale & Crop images. You can’t change the aspect ratio, but the scale & crop function is easy to use.
One of the bonuses of Twitter Filters is that it does allow you to see what your image would like like with all 8 filters on one screen. A feature that more photo apps should consider.
Here are a look at all the filters:
No Filter. Auto-enhance.
Vignette. No Auto-enhance.
Vignette. Auto-enhance.
Black & White. Auto-enhance.
Black & White. No Auto-enhance.
Warm. No Auto-enhance.
Warm. Auto-enhance.
Cool. No Auto-enhance.
Cool. Auto-enhance.
Vintage. No Auto-enhance.
Vintage. Auto-enhance.
Cinematic. No Auto-enhance.
Cinematic. Auto-enhance.
Happy. No Auto-enhance.
Happy. Auto-enhance.
Gritty. No Auto-enhance.
Gritty. Auto-enhance.
One setback of Twitter Filters that I’m not sure if it is tied to my phone or if it is connected to the app is that Twitter Filter images are saved in your Camera Gallery, rather than establishing a separate Album like Instagram does.
The camera that Twitter Filters uses is the default camera on your phone. I consider this to be a plus, because I haven’t seen the camera app that is superior to the default camera app on my phone.
Now might be a good time to check in to my Instagram feed.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen these all before.
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen these all before.
If you follow me on Flickr, you’ve seen many of these before.
If you follow me on Foursquare, you seen a few of these.
If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve see a few of these as well.
Not sure where next week’s Wednesday randomness will take us.
Caught up?
Day 163 – Something Beginning with a “T”
Day 164 – Paper
Day 165 – One O’Clock
Day 166 – Water
Day 167 – Surprise
Day 168 – Circle
The themes for the next 7 days:
Day 169 – Something Yellow
Day 170 – An Ordinary Moment
Day 171 – Jumbled
Day 172 – A Favorite Toy
Day 173 – Shadow
Day 174 – Bright
Day 175 – Playing
