Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Hipstamatic and Rebooting a Hobby

As any­one who hasn’t been liv­ing in a sack for the last few years will be aware, the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) plat­form has become some­thing of a pop­u­lar hit, with an App Store that now com­prises hun­dreds of thou­sands of apps for all pur­poses (both real and ima­gined) under the sun. I’ve owned an iPhone for the last two years, and dur­ing that time have tried a fair few. Many have been impress­ive, but none so much as Hipstamatic (iTunes link), which I bought on a whim after see­ing some of its out­put on Twitter. And I’ve found using it to be quite a trans­form­at­ive experience.

In a nut­shell, Hipstamatic sim­u­lates a vin­tage film cam­era, much like the vaunted Instamatic and Holga low-fi cam­eras of old. The user can swap out the vir­tual cam­era lens, film and flash, choos­ing from a vari­ety of options — some sup­plied and some avail­able to pur­chase in-app. Under the hood, tak­ing a photo (through the cute mini­ature “view­finder” view­port on-screen) causes vari­ous fil­ters and effects to be applied to the photo accord­ing to these choices. Photos are then browsable via a superbly designed gal­lery inter­face; they’re also saved to the Camera Roll.

The premise, then, is simple enough, but it’s in prac­tice that Hipstamatic really shines. Early obser­va­tions from myself and friends centred around the fact that just about every photo that comes out of this app is fant­astic. The images ooze nos­tal­gia, con­trast and char­ac­ter, and in those first few hours many a Facebook pro­file pic­ture was created.

And then a funny thing happened. A com­pul­sion over­took me that I hadn’t felt for a couple of years — the desire to take lots of pho­tos of everything in sight. A couple of years back, I was a fairly act­ive ama­teur pho­to­grapher — it was, more or less, my main hobby. But since then I’ve been occu­pied by too many other things, and gradu­ally allowed my interest to wane. I’d also always shied away from more can­did pho­tos — pre­fer­ring instead more formal arrange­ments — not least from a point of prac­tic­al­ity (my hulk­ing DSLR isn’t the subtlest thing).

Yet here was an app that pro­duced amaz­ing shots on a device that I always had with me, that could be whipped out in a second to cap­ture the moment. Previously I’d browsed photo col­lec­tions like Larry Clark’s unfor­get­table Tulsa, and while it didn’t leave me with the desire to shoot speed, it did leave me wish­ing that at some point I too would be able to look back on an archive of more per­sonal pho­to­graphs of my own. Using Hipstamatic felt like a decis­ive move towards that, and when that week­end was over I did indeed have a col­lec­tion of snaps on which I could look back and smile.

Using the app for a few days left me with the strong urge to rekindle that old hobby, and I hope that over the next few months I’ll be able to return to pho­to­graphy with the interest and pas­sion I once had.

Hipstamatic is £1.19 on the App Store; in-app kit bundles are £0.59 each.