So I've been holding off on getting an iPhone for as long as I could. Actually, I'm pretty anti-cellphone to begin with, but I figured it was time to join the rest of the human population and get with the 21st Century. When my wife got her iPhone several years ago, she downloaded this app called Hipstamatic. I'm sure all of you have heard of this before and are well versed in it's abilities. The app has made some waves in the journalism community over the last year with some photographers questioning whether or not it should be used in a journalistic atmosphere. The big brew-ha-ha that started the whole thing was New York Times photographer Damon Winter's third-place win in the feature picture story category in last year's Pictures of Year International competition. Winter used his camera phone with the Hipstamatic app to create the images for the story. Critics jumped on him for shooting images that were run through a software processor and then entering them into a journalism competition. Ethically, photojournalists are not allowed to manipulate any images other than basic cropping and toning. HERE is the link to Winter's response to the uproar on the New York Times website with links to other posts about the photos. Personally, I thought the story was kind of cool and a unique way to get a point across.
I love just about every Hipstamatic image I see and with the first heavy snowfall of the year last night, I shot a few frames with my new toy just to see what I could come up with. I didn't want to hang around too long because of the worsening road conditions so I was basically just doing a drive-by iPhone-ing. (Did I just coin a new phrase?) What a blast! I'm definitely going to be including this tool in my bag of documentary tricks.
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