Travelogue: Princes Street a la Hipstamatic and an iPhone
31 October 2024
Sir Walter Scott Monument along Princes Street, Edinburgh, Scotland
In photography, sometimes it’s okay to use your phone. Since June 2009, I’ve been capturing images on an iPhone. In that time, I’ve captured over 200,000 “snapshots of daily life” and also created focused work, in which I’ve sold prints, books, and used them for presentations in mobile photography workshops.
In that time I’ve used hundreds of apps to capture, edit, and share images made on an iPhone. One of my favorite apps that I found back in 2009 was Hipstamatic.
Not all of the apps from those early days are still in use today or even available on the App Store, but Hipstamatic is. It’s very different today than it was at the beginning and these days there are two versions available.
The one called Classic Camera is the original Hipstamatic app.
The concept is to select a lens and a film or a flash or some combination thereof to create an image that was inspired by film.
Over the years there have been really creative options within Hipstamatic, including the ability to do double exposures, create a pinhole effect, add shapes, patterns, and more.
One of my go-to options is double exposure mode. It takes some practice to kind of really build a double exposure in camera that’s unique. And yes, we can take two images into Photoshop and blend those images and make it perfect but for me, I love kind of that process of learning and experimenting while I’m out making images.
These apps are relatively inexpensive $2 to $3 and the classic camera app allows for in-app purchases where you can add filters and things like that.
The Hipstamatic app runs a little bit differently and now includes a membership option. Currently, I’m not using the membership option, the basic option provides me the opportunity to experiment and explore.
Do you use your phone for photography? Have a fave app? Let me know!
These images were taken on Halloween day (2024), in Edinburgh using the double exposure mode and the “Gastown” filter.
Step count: 14,728
~Kate