Journal your life story with images using this fab iOS app

Days is a journal disguised as an iOS app to document your life as it happens – in photographs.

Shoot photos throughout the day, and publish your post of images the following day in a visually delightful grid of time-stamped pics.

How is this different from Instagram? So many ways. Cool ways, too.

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Is photography dead?

Photography experienced something of a renaissance when smartphones came along. Far from being dead, apps such as Instagram rejuvenated the art form.

Some interesting facts include:

  • Facebook has 10,000 times more photos than the world’s largest library, the USA’s Library of Congress
  • photos make up 42% of posts on Tumblr
  • 741 million mobile phones worldwide have “some type of photo capability”

The infographic below by Overgram, an app that adds text to Instagram photos, details the evolution of photography from its birth in 1826 to modern-day usage on social networks… fascinating!

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Your thoughts? Do share!

Free giveaway… a new PhoGo case for iPhone 5 from DiffCase!

PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 from DiffCase

Check out the following brief video which highlights the features offered by the new PhoGo Case for iPhone 5 from Jim Armstrong on Vimeo.

So what do you think?

If you’d like one for free, Life In LoFi has three PhoGo cases to give away right now – including a Sun Shade and the 3-in-1 Lens set! Just click here to enter!

Cut-off time to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Sunday March 31, 2013.

10 simple lessons to take your photography to the next level (lessons 6-10)

6) CONTROL THE LIGHT

Your Brain
Your camera or smartphone is not as clever as you are…it can only see 4 stops of light (let’s not worry about what stops are for now) but your eye can see 12 stops. So, for example, you line up your friends against a bright background and all looks amazing…you take a picture and your friends are quite dark and the background is not great either…wot the?

The camera or smartphone is trying it’s best to work out the exposure (how much light to capture) so guesses somewhere in the middle, it doesn’t know your friends are more important than the background.

Your job is to help it and prioritise what’s important.

The great news is that most cameras, phones and apps have something brilliant called exposure compensation that nobody much ever uses. It basically allows you to add or subtract light after the camera has made its guess. It often has the symbol +/-
Check out your device and start using it today!

Indoors tricks
What we want is quality of light and not quantity. Often in a room there is way too much light bouncing everywhere to make an interesting picture, so take control! Turn off the overhead lights, close the door, half close the curtains and suddenly thing get interesting.

Taking control may mean moving your subject to a better position….look around, are there any pools of light from windows? Maybe turn on a lamp and if not…why not create your own with inexpensive LED video lights? (More on that soon.)

Cheats:

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10 simple lessons to take your photography to the next level (lessons 1-5)

1) FILL THE FRAME

Take a moment to think about what you are trying to say (photographing) and try to fill the frame with just that.

Be bold:

Then once you think you have got as close as you can…..get closer!

You’ll be amazed how many times there is another picture in your picture and often one with more impact.

I know this sounds simple and obvious, but go look at your gallery with fresh eyes… 

A word of caution:  Unless you have an optical zoom (sorry smartphone users) you need to avoid zooming if at all possible…I know you can zoom, but what you are actually doing if you zoom digitally is just throwing away pixels and therefore quality.

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Hipstamatic 262 is out now – and so is Silver Lake HipstaPak!

hipstamatic 262 Silver Lake HipstaPak

Start your downloads. After over a week of false starts and hitting refresh in HipstaMart a jillion times, Hipstamatic 262 is finally out now. Included in the update is the long-awaited new Silver Lake HipstaPak, available as an in-app purchase of $0.99. As expected, the Silver Lake HipstaPak includes the new Abbie Lens and Dixie Film.

hipstamatic 262 silver lake, dixie film, abbie lens

The 262 update is light on new features. The main one is the new HipstaPak. I’ve had a chance to shoot a little bit around the house this evening. The Silver lake HipstaPak is definitely one of the better paks. Along with the the excellent Tintype SnapPak, the Haus of Hipstamatic are on a roll.

According to the descriptions, The Abbie Lens is “inspired by the Wonderful Abigail Spencer, (the) lens adds beautiful light to any situation. The lens washes the image in very warm, yellow tones — almost like one of the “cross process” filters found in some analog photo apps but not as washed out. It’s much better than a sepia.

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