Im a bit sad with my addiction to my phone. I hardly even use it to actually telephone anyone. On it, I've: read a few novels, lastly 'The Bourne Identity', which is brilliant and somewhat different to the movie; watched many movies; played hours of games, mostly Trainyard and Scramble, best score 95; used it as a scanner and a diary, a timer, clock, calendar, for Facebook, email etc; used it to search the web, check in at Heathrow, instant message and find my way around London; and lastly to photograph everything from the mornings marmite on toast to a High Dynamic Range (HDR) shot of the glistening blue in the sunshiny fresh snow on top of the mountains currently outside my window.
The camera, on everyones favourite phone, is great quality and its possible to get some brilliant shots - its 'a point and shoot' that you always have in your pocket! Even average shots can be creatively tweaked and filtered with a one of hundreds of photography 'apps'. I have a quite a few and HDR pro is my favourite. Although the built in software has an HDR option, its very basic. HDR is a method of combining various exposures of a shot to gain a higher dynamic range - translated as details in the highlights and shadows at the same time that you would never get from one shot without using fancy lighting… which amazing as it is, the iPhone doesn't have. I do like to play around with fancy lighting on my 'big' camera but an SLR, with change of lens, tripod and off camera flash is a lot to fit in your pocket!
Everything online these days is linked, shared, liked, embedded, twittered, tumblred, facebooked - the list goes on and not wanting to be different, I am guilty of a bit of this… sharing on Flikr and Facebook via Instagram, whilst Flikr links to Momento, my personal diary/journal - in a vain bid to remember what I get up to in my old age. Facebook also adds to Momento oh and Instagram also links to Twitter which in turn links to Facebook… Confused? Basically, adding something to any app or social networking site automatically updates all of your other outlets so that not even your granny can escape from seeing that you had steak and chips for dinner or that the roadworks you walked past earlier look great in HDR. So, back to Instagram - this is my all-round favourite app. Its a really easy to use, and free, way to share your photography with other keen shooters. It has a series of filters that you can add or not before adding to the 'Instagram Community'. One ten filters may give a 70s feel, turn a colour shot black and white or saturate all of the colours to give a surreal look. There is some amazing talent in that community and its fun to peruse interesting, vibrant shots from all over the globe.
Im a grown man approaching 40, maybe I should spend more time in the library and less time playing with my phone!