In an earlier post I wrote about my reservations concerning many of the photo apps for the iPhone. I won’t repeat what I’ve already said and most of them still remind me of adolescents all dressing up the same to show how unique they are.

That said…
I was in Greece. A short family holiday on the island of Paros.
I knew I would take photos, didn’t want to carry heavy gear with me and wanted to use the opportunity to run one of the many tests on my Things I Really Must Try list (which gets longer day by day).

So I decided that all my pictures would be done with my iPhone (modest 3GS) and, gulp, the ubiquitous “alternative” look of the early twenty-tens, Hipstamatic.
The results are in the slideshow. My feelings remain much the same as before: whilst this is all technically wonderful, Hipstamatic et al simply add the veneer of someone else’s vison over the subjects. The narrative is determined by the app.
It’s like too spicy food: after a while you long to taste the meat underneath.

The pictures have been run through Lightroom. I decided I didn’t like the Hipstamatic border that much (partly because it was affected when I adjusted image levels, resulting in borders of different densities and colours in the corrected images). The white balance has been slightly adjusted in some cases.

Oh, and I also made an on demand printing book which, if you’re really interested, you can actually buy.
Trying the printing service was also on The List.
Actually, unless you are ultra-curious, I don’t suggest you buy it: there’s no way (as far as I can figure it out) for me to share profits with the printers who kindly allow me to let others buy my work from them.
Sounds like bad business. At least for me…

The iPhone 3GS’s small (in pixel dimensions compared with the iPhone 4) images held up well when printed to 21.4 x 21.4 cm, the size of the printed book.

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