A quick oversight of Hipstamatic and you find it’s basically another ‘Toy Camera’ app for the iPhone, adding various effects, filters and backgrounds to give your photos the look and feel of a lo-fi film camera.

I’ve had Hipstamatic since Christmas after the apps store genius recommend it to me. After installing it I took a instant dislike to it, mainly because once you have bought the app you have to hand over more money to buy the additional filters, and that’s not cool in my mind and a very sneaky way for developers to extract more money from us, I would rather them charge more for the app than drop the a-bomb on us when we hand over our money. Other things quickly annoyed me, you couldn’t save high-res files. (Fixed in the latest version) and the slow speed of processing the image. I gave it a few goes but I just couldn’t get the hang of it, so there it lay on the back page of my apps list gathering digital dust.

A few months in to 2010 and I started seeing some of my fellow iPhonegraphers crop up on flickr with rather slick Hipstamatic photos. Seeing what this app was capable of in the right hands, gave me a quick swift kick up the arse to try it out again. The last few weeks I’ve been getting some pretty cool results with it. Will it replace my favourite iPhone app, Camerabag? I very much doubt it, but it will certainly not be on the back page of my apps from now.

*These photos were taken with the standard filters that come with Hipstamatic.

I’ve also started a Flickr Pogo Swap group, so if you have a Polaroid Pogo printer or camera and want to join in with the swapping fun please add yourself to the group and wait for further instructions.

Lisa’s Blurb
My love for fashion and all things fashion related began as soon as I left my mother’s womb I think. I have always experimented with clothes- looking back, some outfits worked better than others! However, it has only been in the last 5 years that I have made fashion my life. I started a photography course and found myself falling in love with the models I was shooting and how clothes fell, hugged and sometimes completely changed their bodies- taking on a alternative personality each outfit change. I moved on to study commercial photography at degree level, specializing in fashion photography. Now entering the final few months left at university I am ready to spread my wings and throw myself into the fashion industry. I have grown to be particularly interested in Fashion PR and Fashion Buying as possible routes when I graduate.

Follow Lisa on Twitter – @lisahollowood
findyourtribe.com
lisaannhollowood.blogspot.com/

Trish’s Blurb:
Hails from Vancouver, BC, Canada which at this moment, hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics.

“I love working and experimenting in all the possible categories of photography. Currently, I mostly work with musicians/producers/djs and actors, being Vancouver is ‘Hollywood North’ after all. I love playing with plastic cameras, phone cameras and vintage cameras, but of course, most clients prefer high resolution studio/strobe photography these days…”

My blog (which I haven’t updated in eons) and website: www.trishmeow.com
Flickr: www.flickr.com/trishliao

Add me on Twitter if you like to hear someone complain about everything and anything all day long:  @trishmeow

Flickr is awesome, I love the social aspect of it, and the Pogo users seem to be very active indeed. This is my second Pogo Swap that fines its way into my Moleskine Journal. This time, I swapped prints with Richard from Norwich. Cheers dude.

I’ve also started a Flickr Pogo Swap group, so if anyone wants to join in with the swapping fun please add yourself and wait for further instructions.

Jena’s Blurb
I’m a retro fine art photographer who was born in the wrong decade.

Twitter – @jenaardell
Website – jenaardell.com
Blog – jenaardell.blogspot.com
Flickr – flickr.com/photos/jenaardell/
Shop – Etsy

If you want to be next weeks #Fridayfeature, you know what to do….. if not, you can click here.

Well Done everyone, winners follow:
Photo 1. Toby Bisco
Photo 2. Angela Ayepe
Photo 3. Russell Holliss

and Pamela Tardy, Well done… T-Shirt is on it’s way to you for donating the most.

Well done and thanks to everyone who took part in the noRaffle.

If you want to donate to the British Red Cross, follow this link, they could do with your spare cash.

The Red Cross contacted me and advised me to stop the raffle because the all the fraudulent websites around.

What’s funny, as soon I announced what had happened on Facebook & Twitter the donations came flooding in. HAHA. It just shows that negative publicity works, but we all knew that anyway, didn’t we Kate Moss.

So in the true random spirit, I’m pulling the plug on raffle but still going to do the draw. So, if you have entered, you have a much better chance of winning something. Now that’s exciting isn’t it?

Again, thanks to everyone who helped, i’m not sure how much we raised, but it’s not bad for about 8 hours of spamming fund raising on Twitter & Facebook.

A big thank you to James, Elaine and Becky who were going to donate some of their amazing art and textiles for the raffle. You lot are ace :-)

All the best, and thanks again.
Random Sam
xx

Expect the results in the next couple of days… Fingers Crossed :-)

And lastly and most importantly, go and donate on the British Red Cross website. Haiti needs your help.

Good luck!

Hello my Random friends,

Well over a week has passed since the earthquake has hit Haiti and things really don’t seem to be getting better for them with large aftershocks happening this week, making life even more unbearable than it already is. If the photos and videos coming out of Haiti have affected you as much as they have affected me, then please, just for a second… carry on reading…

British Red Cross photostream from Flickr

I propose a raffle in aid of the people of Haiti.
I’m going to try and raise £1000 for the British Red Cross in 4 weeks (Or shorter if we can)…. I know it’s going to be tough, but I’m sure we can pull together and do this. I know that i’m no Bono or a member of Coldplay (Thank fuck for that), but I feel it’s my duty as a traveller/human to do something for the people of Haiti, who are in dire need of our support at this time. PLEASE HELP!

How’s it going to work.
I have 1000 raffle tickets priced a £1 each.
You can buy 1 ticket or all the way up to 50 tickets, it’s totally up to you how much you spend, but the more you buy the better chance you have winning. So let me clarify it for you:
1 ticket is £1
50 tickets are £50

What you do you win?
Having just bought 3 A3 size frames the other day to decorate my wall with my photos. I thought, instead of decorating my walls, how about I decorate someone else.
I shall print 3 photos from my Far From Home project, frame them and give them away to the lucky winners.

This way, you have 3 chances of winning something. Now that’s exciting, don’t you agree?
I’ll even pay for the postage to ship the photos out to you, even if you live in Timbuktu.
And for the kind soul who donates the most, they win a  Toy Camera T-Shirt.

Prize 1.

Prize 2.

Prize 3.

How/When will the winner be announced?
Once the last ticket has been sold, I shall put all the names into a hat (Probably not a hat, more like a cooking pot) and pull 3 names out under the watchful eye of my house mate ‘A Guy called Guy’. We shall make a video of it and stick it up on YouTube, so you can see that it was done fairly. The winners will be contacted by the email they used to buy the tickets with.

Raffle is now closed

As the week goes by, the snow falls, freezing the roads that morph in to one continuous ice ring. I amuse myself by watching commuters sliding ever which way, trying their best to get to work unscathed. My evil side comes out as I secretly hope I catch someone wiping out, how that would make me laugh, except if it was me, landing on my fat arse.

I can’t even enjoy my daily bike ride because of the weather. I must find another release to stop me going insane and to break up the daily grind of work, sleep, work, sleep.
For the next seven days I had an idea to take one photo every morning on the walk home. At the same time I would log the song I was listening too.
London feels like a very different place this time in the morning,  quiet, subdued & lonely. With the music jamming in my ear, the following photos were captured during those seven sleepy walks home.

To play the track, click play on the media player under each of the photos.
All photo’s were taken on the iPhone 3GS and using the wonderful Camerabag app.

Saturday

Tricky: Abbaon Fat Track

Sunday

Fever Ray: Triangle Walks

Monday

Broken Social Scene: Cause = Time

Tuesday

The Beloved: Sweet Harmony

Wednesday

Booka Shade: Charlotte

Thursday

Yelle: Tristesse/Joie

Friday

LCD Soundsystem: All My Friends

With all this going down, I hardly noticed the snow falling. I snapped this one photo to remind me of the day I nearly lost 4 years of my life. It might sound a bit drastic, but this blog has now turned in to a monster, it’s big part of my life, my memories and my creative release. If I lost it, I would be losing a big chunk of my life.

REMINDER: I MUST BACKUP!!!

Acton Lane – Taken on the iPhone with the Camerabag App