Tragically Hipstamatic.

It may be noted that, aside from the CRI Project, I haven't been posting very much recently.
Lack of posting, in my case, is usually caused by chronic ennui (which I believe is some kind of syndrome) but of late it's down to my obsession with the Hipstamatic Camera app.

I'm suffering from a variant of iPhoneography called iPodTouchography.
It's not unusual nowadays to see people wandering the streets with mobile devices clamped to their ears but recently I seem to spend most of my waking hours with an iPod Touch hovering around 6 inches from the front of my face while I tap away furiously at a yellow button on it's screen.

Photography has always seemed like a dark art to me.
Every attempt I've made at getting to grips with the practice has ended, after waiting 48 hours for processing, in a series of blurred images that bore no relationship to the object I'd intended capturing with the spirit box.
I have ended up with some 'good' photos or, at least, ones I'm happy with, but they've always been the product of good luck rather than good judgement or skill.

The advent of digital photography didn't really help me.
I've had an assortment of cameras that didn't really live up to my expectations. I suspect this was because I bought to a price rather than forking out for a quality product which, in any case, would have been obsolete by the time I'd taken the wrapping off let alone deciphered the first page of the instruction manual.

My favourite camera of late has been the one in my mobile phone.
In fact my phone's ability to take pictures has been the only reason I carried it around and although the quality of the images it produced was good I'd spend hours messing about with them in Gimp to make them look anything like I considered interesting.

So, I bought an iPod Touch.
The principal reason for buying it was so I could fill it with the pod-casts that get me through the day, then I discovered the app Retro-Camera.

For a free app, that essentially replicates crappy old cameras of a bygone era, Retro-Camera seemed completely astonishing to me and I began taking pictures on a almost hourly basis.
Sadly it kept crashing or locking up which became very frustrating very quickly (though I still think it's remarkable for a freebee).
Some of the pictures I took with it can be seen here:
Retro-Camera Shots

The Hipstamatic Camera app came to my attention through the Retro-To-Go blog and I thought it would be a useful standby when Retro-Camera got petulant.

I was reluctant to use it at first as it seemed complicated and I found the lens, film and flash combinations it offered bewildering but, after a good deal of ignorant experimentation, I finally stubbled on a set up that took pictures I actually liked (John S. lens/ Kodot XGrizzeled film)
From that point on I've been looking at the world through Hipstamatic's tiny view finder.

A small sample of what I've ended up with can be found here:
Hipstamatic Pictures

Sadly I couldn't decide which one to use to illustrate this post.
(and now I've hit my 'Arty Black and White' phase.)

B.T.W. The title for this post came from this blog: Tragically Hipstamatic
which is run by someone who seems to have this malady worse than me.