Hipstamatic: a toy that needs a different vision

There are just so many apps available for taking pictures on the iPhone that one does not easily know what to choose, althoug a little googling will give you equally lots of lists with peoples' favourites. Hipstamatic is sure to turn up as one of them. So I donwloaded it a whle ago, but I must admit that I have not really often found a good way for using it.

It is a nice toy, but you really have to take a different look at taking pictures. I find that difficult. My vision is more 'traditional', most of the time. I want to take pictures that are sharp (selectively), well-exposed (for the purpose), etc. The creativity is in finding a good perspective, a good compisition--and in knowing what the picture should get across to the viewers.

This Hipstamatic game requires a different type of creativity and vision. It is more about colour, mood, and emotional vehicles to get 'something' across to the viewers. But I guess that it also leaves more freedom to the viewers--requires more involvement of the viewers as well, though: you as a viewer have to think much more about what this picture with these effects says to you. I'm curious to know if this one says anything to you. Reactions are welcome!

On time zones and smart design

When exporting the photos of the hotel atrium for the blog entry of last night, they were in "tomorrow's" date folder on the computer. I had forgotten to change the time in the camera. Now I brought just the simple compact camera, not the DSLR, and I don't know its menus that well. But it was easy to find time settings and I was completely surprised to see that it had the option of setting two time zones: "home" and "destination". Destination is sought by scrolling across a world map; no need to fiddle with hour settings at all. It's a breeze! In the DSLR I'd have to search through more menu pages and then would have to adjust hour settings manually.

But even in the DSLR I still could DO it. In my so-called smartphone, I quickly returned to the European time settings, because when I changed the time zone, the MS-Outlook app decided that all appointments would have to be adjusted as well, completely spoiling the carefully-planned dinner meeting to midday, interviews to the middle of the night... Why would it assume that I made appointments in my home time zone if they were for an intercontinental trip?

Well, to compensate for that bit of frustration about not so smart design, I'll add another picture of the hotel atrium--still with the wrong time zone in its data, if you care to look them up :-)