Each of the six editions feature ten photographs taken by locals that show the diversity of Brisbane’s communities. The ‘Capture The Cover’ competition marked the first time that Yellow Pages has turned its covers over to the public to help design.

View the ‘Capture The Cover’ Brisbane winners

Included in the photographs chosen were several taken with mobile phones, including the winner of the Inner City Northern cover. City office worker Natasha Behan took a photo of Brisbane’s skyscrapers on a foggy morning with her iPhone from her desk.

Major winners for each edition won either an Apple iPad or Canon DSLR 1100 camera and all runner-ups won $50 cash.

Melbourne-based Misho Baranovic is holding two mobile photography workshops at the Caboolture Hub on Thursday 17 January.

You may already be familiar with Misho through his appearance on national ABC TV in 2012, when he was the judge in ‘Photo Finish’, the show hosted by Andrew Günsberg where three amateur photographers are put to the test in a different photographic field each week.

Misho is also the author of an excellent e-book on how to take professional photos with your iPhone which I reviewed in my post iPhone Photography by Misho Baranovic [book review].

The two courses Misho has lined up for Caboolture look fantastic, here’s a run down.

Introduction to Mobile Photography ($80 - 9am – 12 noon on Thursday January 17, 2013) includes a history of mobile photography, how to use the standard camera (iPhone and Android), composition techniques, a local photowalk to put techniques into practice, a demonstration of editing apps, while students are also given opportunity to upload, display and discuss their photography.

Mobile Street Photography ($95 – 12.30pm – 4.30pm on Thursday January 17, 2013) includes a history of mobile street photography, basic and advanced shooting techniques, street photography tips, a local photo walk to put techniques into practice, demonstration of editing apps, and again students are given opportunity to upload, display and discuss their photography.

“The mobile phone is a game changer for photography” says Misho. “People can now capture, edit and share photos with the one device that’s always with them.” His workshops are said to help people find their photographic vision through this integrated process.

For course registration telephone (07) 5433 3700 or email CabooltureHub@moretonbay.qld.gov.au. You can also sign-up for the workshops online.

Get ahead of the photography game and sign up today! 

Created by  Dan Marcolina, the author of the hugely popular iPhone Obsessed book, AppAlchemy focuses on post-processing and experimental image making techniques using iPhone apps. It contains reviews of 40 different apps, details 32 image formulas and contains over 5 hours of video lessons.

Inspirational from the start

AppAlchemy is inspirational from the moment it starts up –  atmospheric music plays as a series of Dan’s impressive experimental images flash across the screen.

The next screen is like a table of contents split into four sections with tabs down the left-hand side.

Image tutorials

The first tab ‘Image tutorials’ features 8 step-by-step tutorials (screenshot below) showing how Dan creates his stunning images.

The original image and finished image are shown, with a number of steps in-between showing you how to create the image yourself. Each step has its own video tutorial featuring a different app.

The video tutorials are well put together and show off Dan’s considerable skill, while at the same time being easy to follow.

You can see a clue to one of the very clever touches in AppAlchemy in the top left of the screenshot above. When  you tilt your iPad to portrait mode, other images that have gone through similar post-processing techniques appear (both before and after shots).

App Reviews

The second tab App Reviews is my favourite part of AppAlchemy. With so many photo and image processing apps in the marketplace, it’s difficult to know which one are worth having and which ones you can pass on.

This indispensable guide cuts out the guess work for you. It features 40 app reviews in eight different categories: Production; Grunge, Light and blur; Toon & graphic; Film looks; Cameras; HDR and AutoFXs.

You can see the App Reviews screen below. Clicking on one of the app icons on this page takes you to a full screen review.

Which apps are reviewed?

There’s a good range of apps reviewed across lots of different categories. Below is a full listing.

Production - Blender, Snapseed, PhotoForge2, PS Express, Photo FX, Lab, Touch ReTouch, Anti Crop, PerfectlyClr, Full Res.
Grunge – ScratchCam, Vintage, ModGrunge, Pic Grunger.
Light and blur - TiltShift, Lens Flare, Blur FX, Big Lens.
Toon & graphic – ToonPAINT, Percolator, Diptic, WordFoto, addLib, Decim8.
Film looks – Plastic Bullet, Dramatic B&W.
Cameras - SlowShutter, BracketMode, Fast Camera, CCD.
HDR - TrueHDR, DynamicLight, pro HDR, SimplyHDR.
AutoFXs - PicFx, Pixlromatic, Jazz, PictureShow, RetroCamera.

I already owned quite a few of the apps listed above, but it was still interesting to watch the video tutorials to see how Dan uses them. His knowledge is displayed effortlessly in each video as he gives you tips and tricks on how to get the most out of each app.

Below you can see the app review of one of my favourite apps TouchRetouch.

On the left hand side, the video tutorial appears in the middle of the iPhone background image – you can easily make it full screen though if you wish. Dan fires up the app and shows you the possibilities it has for iPhone image processing.

On the right hand side, Dan describes each app and provides a useful table of facts underneath it including such information as Pros and cons, Price, Resolution and his rating.

From the right hand side of the page you can also pull out the quick start guide (screenshot below) – handy if you have no internet connection or just want a quick overview of the app without watching the video.

An internet connection is required to watch the videos as they are streamed from the Internet. I found even on 3g they download quite quickly and there wasn’t much of a delay.

All of the app reviews have the same clever tilt feature described earlier, though for the apps, a Pinterest board of images processed with this app appears (see below).

Resources and About the author

The last two tabs on the table of contents link to a Resources section (more reviews, resource sites and new images) and to the About the author section where you can learn more about Dan, with links to his website and profiles on social networking sites.

Trailer video

Part app, part book, part video masterclass. Take a look at the trailer video below and see for yourself!

What do I like about AppAlchemy?

Pretty much everything!

Video tutorials

For learning different image making processes using iPhone apps, video is the only way to go. In this app there are over 5 hours of videos. 

App recommendations

With so many similar apps in some categories, it’s hard to know which ones to buy. Dan’s guide takes out the guesswork.

Inspiration

I’ve been playing around with AppAlchemy for a couple of months now and it has opened my eyes to different image processing techniques. It’s actually taken me far longer to write the review for this appbook than I’d ever anticipated, simply because each time I fire it up, I learn about a new app, which I then go and buy from the app store and play around with for the next few days.

The price

App Alchemy is a bargain costing just $6.99 (US) / $7.49 (AUS) / £4.99 (UK). These prices are cheaper than at launch. Grab yourself a bargain!

What don’t I like about it?

At first I found navigating through the app a little confusing until I got used to it.

December 2012 update

Version 1.1 of AppAlchemy was released in December featuring smaller downloads, higher quality images, fixed broken links fixed and bug fixes for iPad 1.

AppAlchemy Pocket

On 6 December, a free iPhone app called AppAlchemy Pocket was launched which brings a taster of these excellent tutorials to iPhone. You can buy the full version of AppAlchemy Pocket in-app for $3.99. AppAlchemy Pocket doesn’t have quite as much content as the iPad version – it features  28 essential apps and 7 image formulas with detailed step by step video tutorials with 3 hours of video tutorials.

That’s the stark realisation that page owners are coming to terms with after recent changes to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.

Previously, between 30-40% of fans would see your posts in their news feed. Now that Facebook has rolled out its ‘Promote this post’ feature, the percentage of fans seeing your posts has been slashed to 10-20%.

Working in digital communications for a local authority on Brisbane’s Bayside, I know how frustrating this is.

It’s free and always will be. Just don’t expect many of your fans to see your posts anymore unless you pay.

In August and September 2012, our Redland City Council Facebook page experienced some impressive organic growth. Yet by early October, the reach of our posts (the number of people seeing them) started to decline markedly. With our reach decreasing, so did our likes, comments and shares. This was at a time when Facebook rolled out their new feature ‘Promote this post’.

To measure the decline in reach, I looked at the Insights data for our twice-weekly crowdsourced photography feature. We ask members of the public to tag photos of the Redlands with #RedlandLocal on Instagram, which we then feature on several social networks including Facebook.

Before ‘Promote this post’ appeared, our #RedlandLocal photos were regularly being seen by around 700 people – or approximately 40% of our fans. Since ‘Promote this post’ appeared, the reach of these posts slumped to around 350 people, and sometimes as low as 150.

View from Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island. One of our #RedlandLocal photos.

At first I thought it could just be a temporary blip. Until I saw this post from Hipstamatic World on 7 October to their 13,500 fans.

“Facebook appears to be putting the squeeze on page owners by trying to force them to promote their posts with money. A few weeks ago every photo post I made went out to about 25% of the Hipstamatic World fans. Now it seems like each post is only showing in about 10% of the fans newsfeeds. Greed sucks. I doubt this would be happening if their stock wasn’t in a freefall.”

This was no blip. It was deliberate and orchestrated. The blunt message from Facebook to page owners was this – if you want the same reach you used to have, pay up. I have seen many similar posts from other pages since.

The outrage at these changes was also evident in the blogosphere. A post on the New York Observer site summed it up well – Facebook is broken on purpose. In the post Facebook, I want my friends back, Dangerous Minds has asked whether it is the biggest ‘bait and switch’ in history.

Outrage at new features on Facebook is certainly nothing new. We’ve all seen the whinging and moaning from people when Facebook has dared to change their user interface or bring in something new.

Yet this double whammy of decreasing post reach and introducing promoted posts is one of the most damaging stunts Facebook could’ve pulled. Here’s why.

Loss of trust with Facebook users

People have liked pages about brands, topics and organisations because they want to receive updates from them in their news feed. Yet the likelihood is that they won’t be seeing as many of these updates as they used to – unless these pages pay up.

Loss of trust with business

Many businesses have spent serious money building up their fan base on Facebook through Facebook ads. Now they are finding that it’s so much harder to communicate with their likers unless they promote posts.

In his excellent blog post Goodbye, Facebook, and thanks for all the fish…  Simon Dell brilliantly sums up this loss of trust.

“So why shouldn’t Facebook make money out of brands talking to fans online? Because this wasn’t what Zuckerberg talked about when he presented the social web. It was based on cooperation, sharing, following something you liked, engaging with them. It wasn’t based on who had the most money pushing the little guys aside.”

It’s part of the ever-increasing commercialisation of Facebook

There are now ads everywhere you look. Facebook ads. Promoted posts. Suggested posts. Sponsored stories. Suggestions of other pages to like based on pages my friends like. I’ve even been subjected to huge ads – after signing out of Facebook – from Australian supermarket giant Woolworths.

The social web? Facebook is more like the home shopping network these days.

Facebook thumbing their nose to government and non-profit organisations

Squeezing businesses for money is one thing, but there is something even worse in my book. Facebook have demonstrated that they don’t value the thousands of government, voluntary and non-profit pages that are an integral part of the social web.

The use of social media has revolutionised the way that government and non-profit organisations communicate and engage with their audience.

Just one example of this is the role that social media plays in 21^st century disaster and emergency management. As I write this post, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Red Cross America (among others) are providing invaluable advice and support to those suffering the after effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Yet it’s going to be that much harder for those in the public and voluntary sector to get their messages out there now that we are competing with a barrage of promoted posts by corporate giants.

Wynnum Wading Pool, Brisbane

The pool party’s over

Mashable reported last week that Facebook compared themselves to a swimming poolin a recent post.

 “Swimming pools are filled with people. Some you know. Some you don’t. And every once in a while you see something that maybe you shouldn’t. That’s why swimming pools are a little like Facebook.”

Promoted posts have left many Facebook page owners feeling like the pool party’s over and it’s time to get out of the water.

This post was first published by comms2point0 – the free online resource for creative communicators. 

Light and compact

The Tiltpod is light and compact. Like the iPhone itself, you can take it with you wherever you go. A few months ago I bought a Gorillapod for my iPhone – I hardly ever take it out with me though because it doesn’t easily fit in my pocket. The Tiltpod however, fits on my keyring and is always with me.

The tiltpod is light, compact, and fits on your keyring.

How sturdy is Tiltpod?

Is the Tiltpod as sturdy as a Manfrotto tripod? Well, no. But you can’t fit a Manfrotto on your keyring! I’ve tested out the Tiltpod a number of times in the last few weeks and I’m quite impressed with it.

Your iPhone 4 / iPhone 4s will fit in the holder in both landscape and portrait orientation. When in landscape orientation (below) it feels very sturdy and you can swivel your iPhone around 360 degrees to get just the right angle. In portrait orientation, you can really only have your iPhone straight up – putting it on any angle will cause it to fall over.

The tiltpod at work – you can easily swivel your iPhone around to get just the right angle.

Build quality

The Tiltpod has a quality feel to it. There are two parts to it – the iPhone holder/adaptor and the base. Both parts are magnetised and they snap together strongly. The holder/adaptor has some strong thread attached to it which ensures that when the two separate, you won’t lose it (you can see the thread in the top right of the photo below). The bottom of the base is green and has a rubber feel to it which makes it grip to surfaces.

The bottom of the tiltpod is made from a rubber-like material which grips to surfaces.

Why use a Tiltpod?

Here are some possible uses of the Tiltpod mobile.

1. Stop motion videos – I had great fun shooting some stop motion videos with the Tiltpod mobile. The one below was shot at SeaWorld while we were waiting in a queue. I didn’t plan on shooting this before we went out for the day, but since I had some time on my hands and had the Tiltpod mobile in my pocket, I thought, why not?
2. Get in the picture – if you want to be in the photo, set your iPhone up with Tiltpod mobile and use the self-timer function found in many camera replacement apps such as Camera+, ProCamera and 645 pro.
3. FaceTime – if  you have extended FaceTime sessions, the Tiltpod mobile could be just the thing you’re looking for to save you holding up your phone for a long time.
4. Watch movies – if you usually prop your iPhone up somewhere so you can watch a movie on it, Tiltpod mobile would be a big improvement.

Any disadvantages?

The only real disadvantage of the Tiltpod mobile for me is that you have to take your case off your iPhone to use it. No big deal, after all, there are so many different types of case on the market it would be pretty hard to make a product that fits every one.

Another thing I have noticed is that the iPhone holder comes away from the magnetic base quite often when my keys jangle about in my pocket. But again, no big deal.

iPhone 5 compatibility

The iPhone 5 is thinner than the iPhone 4/4s, so it won’t fit in the Tiltpod mobile as is.

However, checking out the Tiltpod Facebook page, it seems that if you have a case around 1.7mm thick, it will fit in okay.

Cost

The Tiltpod mobile is well priced at $14.95 (USD) + shipping. At that price, you’d be crazy not to have one!

Melbourne photographer Misho Baranovic is one of the World’s leading experts on mobile photography. In his new ebook iPhone Photography – How to shoot, edit and share great photographs, he shares a wealth of experience and knowledge covering all aspects of taking photos with your iPhone.

The first thing I noticed about this ebook was how good it looks. iPhone Photography is beautifully laid out which makes flicking through it a joy – on every page there is something that catches your eye. It took me a while to force myself to start reading it at the beginning.

As the title suggests, the ebook is split up into 3 chapters – Shoot, Edit, and Share.

Chapter One: Shoot

Basics: where to begin? starts off with Misho showing how he grips his iPhone and then gives an overview of the in-built photography functions on the iPhone – the native iPhone camera app and the Photos app.

Taking control – camera replacements apps describes  the typical features that can be found in camera replacement apps, followed by a useful table listing the features and pros & cons of 6 of the most used camera replacement apps – Camera+, Camera Awesome, ProCamera, 645 Pro and 6 x 7 App.

Next comes a full 5 pages on how Misho uses his camera replacement app of choice – ProCamera. I’ve had ProCamera on my phone for about a year now, but I have rarely used it, preferring Camera+. Misho’s explanations have made me want to use it more.

Finding your subject - is one of the most interesting sections of the ebook. Over 30 pages, five different genres of photography are examined in turn – with advice, interviews, diagrams and exercises to help you get the best out of your subjects.

In On the street, Misho gives 10 very useful tips on how to approach street photography with the iPhone. With the family looks at taking portraits of your nearest and dearest. In nature examines landscape photography. Travelling abroad provides travel photography tips and lists the ideal iPhone travel toolkit. At night describes how to bag great night time images.

iPhone Photography – How to shoot, edit and share great photographs

Chapter Two: Edit

Edit starts off with a run down of the native iPhone editing capabilities – rotate, auto-enhance and cropping.

Next is a quick overview of One touch apps looking at Hipstamatic and ShakeItPhoto, followed by Filter based processing which has a look at Cross Process and Camera+.

Professional processing takes a more in-depth look at my favourite editing app – Snapseed.  Misho walks us through basic colour photo edits using Snapseed, followed by a black and white edit. Next is a look at how iPhoneographer Jordi V. Pou uses Filterstorm to create mobile masterpieces.

Finishing off the chapter is a tutorial using Phoster, a great app which is a fairly recent arrival to the app store.

Chapter Three: Share

In the final chapter, Misho describes his workflow for sharing his mobile photos on different social networks – Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, EyeEm and others.

It also covers hashtagging, local photo walks, a useful section on getting your images ready to print, and the Instaburb book.

iPhone Photography is beautifully laid out

My highlights

1. The ebook is well designed and beautifully laid out.
2. Links to other resources (websites, apps, videos) work seamlessly on your digital device, enabling you to dip in and out of the book effortlessly while exploring the world of mobile photography.
3. Discovering new apps - I have over 50 photo, video and editing apps on my iPhone, however there were still a couple of gems that I hadn’t discovered until I read this book – ProHDR and Autostitch.
4. The interview with Robert-Paul Jansen - I found this interview particularly interesting. I enjoyed looking at his fairytale landscapes and reading about how he created them with Camera+ and ProHDR. I also loved his approach to photography to fit it in around his family – something I sometimes find a struggle.
5. The book has just the right mix  of diagrams, charts, examples, photos, interviews and exercises.

Summary

iPhone Photography – How to shoot, edit and share great photographs by Misho Baranovic is one of the best photography books I’ve read in the last few years. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about taking great photos on your iPhone. It would make a great Christmas gift for family and friends.

There is a great deal of knowledge in the book. Even reading things I already knew was great – it gave a sense of validation that the way I was doing something is the way someone at the top of his game is doing it.

My only criticism of the ebook is that I wished it was longer – I enjoyed it so much I could’ve easily devoured a book 2 or 3 times as long.  In particular, I would’ve loved some more depth in the Finding your subject and Professional processing sections.

Let’s hope another book from Misho is coming soon!

In this post I will look at how you can set up a Flickr account to accept geotagged photos by email straight from that amazing device sitting in your pocket – your smartphone.

Why map geotagged photos?

Let’s have a look at a few uses for mapping geotagged photos.

• During an event such as a festival, you could encourage users to email in their photos from different venues across  your town.
• During an extreme weather event such as flooding, storms or snow,  you could use the map of geotagged photos to give situational awareness to your team to see what’s going on where.
• You could use it on an ongoing basis to map the public’s favourite places in your region.
• You could use it on an ongoing basis as a way for people to report problems such as graffiti or illegal waste.

It’s worth noting that people sending in photos do not need a Flickr account, just an iPhone / Android / Blackberry / Windows phone with the ability to geotag photos and send an email.

Sound cool? It’s easier than you think. Let’s crack on!

1) Set up your Flickr account

The first thing you need is a Flickr account.

If you already have a Flickr account for your organisation, you will probably want to set up a new one for your project.

Each Yahoo! ID can only have one Flickr account, so you will need to set up a new Yahoo! ID and Flickr screen name. This is the most tedious part of the entire process. Make note of the details as it’s easy to forget them.

2) Check your account settings

Once all that is set up, to enable geotagged photos to be emailed to your Flickr photostream, you will need to change some of Flickr’s default settings. To access these settings, click your Flickr screen name at the top of the window or click You – Your account.

Geo preferences

On the ‘Privacy & Permissions’ tab, scroll down to the ‘Defaults for new uploads’ heading and click on the edit link next to ‘Who will be able to see your stuff on a map‘. This takes you to the Geo Preferences page, choose Anyone (recommended).

Edit your geo preferences

Beware that any photos you upload with geotags from now on will show on the map, so be very careful not to take any photos near your house unless you want people to know where you live.

Return to your account page and click on the edit link for ‘Import EXIF location data‘.  Change it to yes.

Custom web address

While you’re on the account settings page, you may as well grab your own custom web address – http://www.flickr.com/photos/[your-organisation/project-name]. This URL can be the same as your Flickr screen name or something different, depending on name availability.

Flickr upload email address

Back on your account page, click on the ‘Emails & Notifications’ tab. There is a heading on this page called ‘Upload by Email options’. Click on the ‘Create an upload-to-flickr email address‘ link. This generates a randomly created Flickr upload email address (see below).

Upload photos by email from your smartphone

The email address that I’ve been given is every80care@ photos.flickr.com.

If you don’t like the sound of the Flickr upload email address you’ve been given, you can reset it to another randomly generated address, though they’re all fairly similar.

Email forwarding

If you don’t like the idea of people using the randomly generated Flickr upload email address, you can set up an account at your organisation to auto-forward all emails to it instead.

Ask your IT techs to create an email address such as photos@your-organisation.gov/.au/.uk which has an automatic re-direct to the  upload-to-flickr email address above.

Ask them to disable any disclaimer notices that are added to outbound mail as these will show up in the description field on your photo.

3) Smartphone settings

Steps 3 and 4 are the parts of the process you will need to tell the public / staff / volunteers.

Enable location services on your phone and for your camera app.

Take a photo.

4) Email your photo to Flickr

Select your photo from your photo album and email it to your upload-to-flickr email address.

The subject of the email becomes the photo’s title. The body of the email becomes the photo’s description.

This farm is down the road from where I live. Make sure you enable location services when you’re out taking photos with your phone. If you don’t, they won’t be geotagged.

5) Check your photostream

Your photo should appear within a few minutes.

When  it appears, click on it. On the right hand side a map will show where you took the photo.

6) Manually adding geotag data to photos and videos

If you don’t see a map in step 5 above, but see a link saying  ‘Add this photo to your map’, you didn’t enable location services on your phone so Flickr can’t pick up the location. This is easy to fix though as you can add a location using the Flickr interface.

Click on the link and you can then search for your location and drag the photo to the correct place on the map.

You can use hybrid or satellite views while doing this, see below.

Adding a photo to the Flickr map

7) Try it out!

If you’d like to try it out without all the hassle of setting up a new Yahoo / Flickr account, here’s what you can do.

• Make sure location services are enabled on your phone – both for your phone and for the camera app you use.
• Take a photo.
• Attach it to a new email on your phone.
• Put the image title in the subject box and add your name and / or a description to the body of the email.
• Send it to every80care@ photos.flickr.com
• Wait for a minute or two and check if it’s appeared in the photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmurrayblog/
• If it has, then have a look at the map http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewmurrayblog/map/. I’ve emailed some iPhone photos from Australia, Singapore and the UK to this photostream, so you will need to zoom in or use the filmstrip images in the bottom left hand corner to find your photo.
• If it appears in the photostream, but not on the map, the photo hasn’t been geotagged i.e. location services weren’t turned on when you took the photo. With your own map you can fix this by adding it to your map manually (see step 6), though when you send it to someone else’s photostream, you can’t.

GEORSS and KML feeds

The fun doesn’t end there. Flickr has some amazing functionality available out of the box, including automatically spitting out GEORSS and KML feeds of your geotagged photos.

To find the links to these feeds, click You – Your photostream. Below the first page of photos are small links to geoFeed and KML.

GEORSS feeds

You could ask the GIS specialist in your organisation to link your corporate GIS system to the Flickr geoFeed. This means that the data can be displayed on your corporate maps as a new layer. Linking to the feed ensures that new photos added to the Flickr photostream will be included.

KML files

KML files can be downloaded and used in mapping tools such as Google Places and Google Earth. Once the file is downloaded though, it is a static version of the data and does not update automatically once new photos are added.

Have fun!

Hope you enjoyed this post, let me know if you have any questions or if you are going to try this out at your organisation.

Although I still have overwhelmingly positive feelings for the app, I have reflected on the reasons why I both love – and hate – Instagram.

Reasons why I love Instagram

1) Mobile photo sharing made easy

Ferris Wheel, Barry Island, Wales

Instagram achieved something that no one else had managed so far. Not Facebook and certainly not Flickr. It

understood the importance of mobile apps and made smartphone photographs easy to share.In my previous post Instagram – the rise of a mobile giant I explain the key to Instagram’s success. It is has a simple, well thought out design and has been tweaked with updates and new features many times since its debut. 

2) Fun and addictive

Why is Instagram so addictive? For me, it’s great to dig your phone out of your pocket and look at how many comments and likes have rolled in since last posting. A similarity Instagram shares with Flickr is it’s friendly, supportive community. This makes a refreshing change from comments on YouTube and from reading the flame wars that erupt in the comments sections of newspaper articles.

3) Seeing the work of some amazing mobile photographers

Instagram has really broadended my horizons about how I think about mobile photography. Seeing the work of amazing mobile photographers from all around the World, how they shoot and what apps they used has been a huge learning experience.

In my previous post Mobile photography – why your smartphone is the best camera I talk about how it took a while for me to take iPhoneography seriously after 15 years of using SLRs. It was the discovery of the Instagram app in February 2011 that really got me interested in iPhoneography and opened up a world of possibilities. Without that discovery, this blog wouldn’t exist.

4) Seeing the everyday world of IGers

Carousel horses, Barry Island, Wales

Seeing the everyday world of IGers is fascinating. Here are some of the things that made me smile over the last couple of days.

• recordsrecycled posted photos of the same space Lego that I got for Christmas in 1984.
• danslee was at some kind of  localgov talk fest. Again.
• kruddmp (former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd) is taking part in a CEO sleepout in Brisbane tonight supporting charity St Vincent de Paul.
• shelbyville posted some great photos of her trip to Oregon.
• rosalives was rockin a pretty cool pair of blue and white pants (that’s trousers to the Brits!) in one of her trademark selfies.

Reasons why I hate Instagram

Okay, hate is a pretty strong word. Maybe I should say dislike, but you get the idea.

1) A thousand likes does not a good photo make

In high school I studied a subject called Logic. We learnt the fallacies of reasoning, one of which was called ad populum. It goes something like this… just because a large amount of people like something, it doesn’t mean it’s any good.

In his excellent blog article Is Instagram Defining, and Therefore Ruining, Mobile Photography? New York based mobile photographer Anton Kawasaki tells how he uploaded a random photo of his hardwood floor to Instagram as an April Fool’s joke. While some people got the joke, many didn’t, and the photo received more than 600 likes from his followers.Most of my Instagram photos barely make it to 15 likes. Sure I could start following another 100 people and the number of likes I receive would increase too, but I ask myself – what’s the point? Would it make my photos any better? No.

2) Filters

Pinwheel, Barry Island, Wales

For about a month in early 2011 I thought the Instagram filters were cool. I don’t think I’ve used one since. For many mobile photographers, Instagram is purely the sharing mechanism for mobile photography, not the creative platform.

A recent BBC News Magazine article Has Instagram made everyone’s photos look the same? explores the use of retro filters by apps like Instagram and the roots of this fad in the Lomography of the 1990s.

Does Instagram make everyone’s photos look the same? I don’t think so – the sheer amount of people using the app now mean that – in my opinion – few photos look the same . There is a lot more to mobile photography now than adding a retro filter to a photo. Yet it still amazes me (and makes me cringe) every time I hear of a new ‘retro photo app’ launching on iTunes or Google Play. Enough is enough.

3) Lack of lists

It’s too easy to miss new photos on Instagram.

I find this one of the most frustrating aspects of the app. I currently follow 127 users from all over the World. The people I follow post photos 24 hours a day. If they happen to post habitually at 2am Brisbane time, I never see their photos as the 20 most recent photos in my feed when I wake up are from people posting after this time.Instagram needs to take a leaf out of Twitter’s interface and introduce user-created lists. Without lists, it’s harder to keep track of photos posted by your favourite IGers.

4) It chews up your data allowance

With my mobile phone contract I have a data allowance of 1.5gb every month.A few months into using IG, I received a huge shock. My phone bill arrived and I was charged $120 for excess data usage. The culprit? Yes, that month I’d been doing a whole lot more instagramming that month whilst out and about. Now I only tend to browse IG on my home wifi connection.

Instagram – love it or hate it?

Let me know what you think!

I’m @mattbrisvegas on Instagram

Enabling location services for camera apps allows them to add a geotag to your image with latitude and longitude details which can be used to pinpoint your image on a map.

So how do you add geo data to your photos after you’ve taken them? This post explains how to reverse geotag your photos using Koredoko on iOS.

(A post on reverse geotagging for Android is in the works!)

Firstly, let’s look at reasons for and against enabling geotagging.

Reasons for geotagging your photos

• You can view your photos on a map – either by using an app or uploading to a website such as Flickr.
• It can help you remember exactly where you took a photo if you were on a cross country walk or in an unfamiliar town or city.
• Photo sharing apps like Instagram and EyeEm can read the geotag automatically. You can then look at photos that other users have uploaded of the same place.

Reasons against geotagging your photos

• Privacy and security concerns are the main reason you wouldn’t enable geotagging. If you upload a photo taken at your home to the Internet, people can download the photo, read the geo data and work out where you live.

Koredoko – good points and bad points

The great thing about Koredoko is that it’s the only iOS app I’ve found that will do what I want – add geotag data to a photo via a map and let you save it.

The bad thing about Koredoko is that it could be easier to use. I must add that I greatly admire all the hard work the developer has put in – I just think it could be improved.

Starting up Koredoko

When you start Koredoko, the app displays the last photo in your camera roll. If the image has geo data, a pointer at the bottom of the image box pinpoints where it was taken on the map. The image box shows the date the image was taken along with its latitude and longitude and street address.

You can set the map up in the settings menu to be normal (shown below), satellite or hybrid.

Photos with geo data show their longitude and latitude and address on the map

Browsing photos

There are three ways of browsing photos using the app. The first two ways are by swiping the thumbnail in the image box and by using the arrow keys at the bottom of the screen. It’s quite fun to do this and watch the map move around, it can be a cool way of retracing your photo walk through a city.

The third way is by tapping the symbol in the bottom left to choose an album to view in list mode.

If you choose an album to view, images appear in a scrollable list (see below). Photos with geotags display the capture date, latitude and longitude. Photos without geotags only display the capture date and N/A in place of geo data.

The two images you see below with N/A are from the Hipstamatic app, they have no geo data as I forgot to enable location services for the app before taking those photos.

Browsing a photo album on your iPhone with Koredoko

Viewing EXIF data

Tapping on the white and blue arrow button next to each image brings up the detail screen – all the EXIF and other data that exists for that photo.

It’s quite interesting to scroll through all this info. If a photo has geo data, there will be a section on this screen named GPS. Tap the album name in the top left to go back to the list view of images.

Detail screen – there is about 3 full screens of data to scroll down through

Adding a geotag

When you tap on an image while browsing through an album, you are taken back to the map view. I tapped on one of my Hipstamatic photos without a geotag – you can see below that this image has no pointer at the bottom of the image box and no address or location information.

Photos without a geotag have no pointer at the bottom of the image box

The fun bit – pinch, drag, drop!

We need to move this image to the correct place on the map and then save it.

As you can see above, Koredoko places your un-geotagged image on the map near where your last geotagged image was.

If you press and hold the image box it will go transparent (see the image below) and you can then move it to another location on the map. A pointer now appears for you to pinpoint the location of the photo.

Press and hold the image box and you can move your photo around the map.

Depending on how far you need to move the image, you may need to pinch the map quite a few times to zoom out. To move my image from Fulham in west London to Bankside in central London, it took about 6 pinches and drags.

This process isn’t too bad when you don’t have to move the photo far, however, if your image was taken in Dubai and you need to move the map there from London, it can take a lot of pinching and dragging! You can zoom the map out quite a long way, so you can skip over continents pretty quickly and then zoom back in to your photo location.

It would be great to have an address or city lookup hooked into the Google Maps that Koredoko uses to make this easier.

Saving the location

When you have found the right location for your image, tap the white and blue arrow button in the image box and you are taken to the detail screen again. Tap the arrow in the top right hand corner and then tap ‘Save with Metadata’.

This looks like the right location!

Where’s my saved image?

A couple of things I worked out by myself.

1. Koredoko doesn’t overwrite your original image, instead it saves another copy of your image with newly added geotag to your iPhone’s camera roll.
2. Regardless of which album you are in, Koredoko saves your new geotagged image to the camera roll album.

How could it be improved?

It would be fantastic if the app had the ability to search a place name and pan straight to it. This would save a lot of fiddly pinching and dragging of the map.

I would also like to see the ability to save the geo data into the original image instead of having multiple copies of the same image in my camera roll.

Free app / removed ads

Koredoko is a free app, note the ads in the screen shot above. The price to remove the ads is currently USD $2.99 / AUD $4.49 / GBP £2.49.

During a recent trip to the UK via Dubai, I took over 1200 photos using the Camera+ app, way more images than any other app and even more than I took on my Fuji X100 digital camera. In this post I review the features of Camera+ and showcase some of the images I’ve taken with it.

View from my hotel window looking towards the Grand Mosque and Dubai Museum.

Separate focus and exposure controls

One of the great features of Camera+ is that it has separate focus and exposure controls, unlike the native camera app on the iPhone where focus and exposure points are bundled together.

Tap two fingers simultaneously on the screen and both a focus point (square) and an exposure point (circle) appear. When you move the exposure point around the scene it lightens or darkens the exposure of the image depending on where the exposure point is placed (see below). When composing an image I put the focus point exactly where I want it and then experiment by moving the exposure point around the screen.

Exposure of the scene changes depending on where the exposure point (circle) is placed

Taking photos

To take a photo you can either press the shutter button on the screen, use the volume buttons on the side of your iPhone, or for the ultimate in candid street photography, plug in some headphones with volume buttons and use it to trigger the shutter.

Tapping the cog symbol next to the shutter button brings up options for stablizer, timer and burst shooting modes - all of which come in handy. In the settings menu, you can turn on gridlines that are helpful when composing an image.

Also available on the shooting screen are the 6x digital zoom and the ability to use the front facing camera.

Flash options

Camera+ also manages to better the native iPhone camera app when it comes to the flash options available. As well as the standard on / off / auto options, there is a torch mode – the iPhone LED acts like a torch on your subject and remains on until you click the shutter button, giving you an iPhone version of continuous lighting.

Lots Road Power Station, Fulham. I stood in front of these bright shutters for a few minutes, waiting for a interesting subject to walk into the frame.

Shooting speed

After using Hipstamastic, taking photos with Camera+ is fast and furious with barely any delay between taking a photo and Camera+ being ready to take the next. (Though now I have over 1400 photos in my Lightbox, things have slowed down a little, time to clear out some photos I think!)

Photographing the Burj Khalifa on a smartphone. I wonder if he’s using Camera+?

Lightbox

All images taken with Camera+ are stored in a scrollable filmstrip called Lightbox. Images are saved here by default, though you can change this and save them to your camera roll, or if you don’t mind slightly slower shooting you can save to both your camera roll and lightbox.

Captured images appear in Lightbox – a scrollable filmstrip which looks good and works well.

As you scroll through your images in lightbox, you can tap on an image to edit it, share it, save it to your camera roll or view info about the image. I really like the info screen (below) – it gives a great overview of all technical details associated with the image, and even a map of where you took it if you have enabled geotagging in the menu.

The rather nice info screen.  (I had the wrong time on my iPhone when I was in London – this image wasn’t taken at 9.48pm!)

Editing images with Camera+

Camera+ has some amazing editing features. As well as the usual rotate and crop, there are lots of different scene modes and borders you can apply to images.

Clarity

It’s worth having a play around with all of the different scene modes, but the best of the bunch is clarity. On certain photos – especially those that have areas of underexposure - the clarity setting brings a fantastic improvement to the brightness and contrast of an image. I wouldn’t advise using it on all images though, sometimes it’s too over the top for me.

Waterloo sunset – what a difference some clarity makes!

Filters

Camera+ features a good range of 27 built-in filters plus 9 more “I heart analog” filters which are an in-app purchase for 99 cents.

I quite like some of the filters, though after using Hipstamatic for so long, I’m rather enjoying seeing my images without a lofi or toy camera effect.

Camera+ filters

What I don’t like about Camera+

Slow retrieval of old photos

Okay, I admit it – this is an issue I have brought upon myself. I love Camera+ so much I’ve taken over 1400 photos with it. The downside of this is that scrolling through the lightbox to see older photos is now a nightmare. I scrolled to the bottom of lightbox and then waited for over 3 minutes until the photos loaded. It must be time to clear out and save photos off the app I think!

Damn those Angry Birds! Dubai Mall

Copying / duplicating photos

Copying / duplicating a photo is something I am used to doing from working with Adobe Lightroom. When I held a photo and the copy command appeared, I tapped on it expecting to see a duplicate appear alongside as it does in Lightroom. When nothing happened, I actually thought it was a bug and the copy command didn’t work, until I realised you had to tap somewhere else on the screen and tap ‘paste’ when it was displayed.

Although iPhone users are used to this functionality for text, I don’t think it is very intuitive when working with images. Especially as no matter where you paste your image in lightbox, the duplicate image automatically ends up as your most recent photo at the top and not next to the original image where I would’ve expected it.

London icon – Battersea Power Station. I had to put my arm through a gap in the boarding that surrounds the power station and shoot one handed to get this shot, being very careful not to drop my iPhone! Sadly I didn’t have any headphones with me to trigger the shutter with my free hand.

Deleting photos

After editing a photo once I accidentally hit the delete button. The photo I had been working on disappeared off the screen instantly. I was panic stricken, thinking that my image was now gone forever! The next image in the lightbox appeared on screen and there was no undo button. I went back to the filmstrip view of the lightbox and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the undo button.

Conclusion

Camera+ is a fantastic app, I love it so much it has won a place on the home screen of my iPhone. I took more photos with it on holiday than any other app and even more than my Fuji X100 digital camera. There are a few minor issues that could be improved, but otherwise this is an app I would recommend to all iPhoneographers.

You can see more of my Camera+ photos on EyeEm – search for user mattbrisvegas.