6X6

6x6 Mobile Photography Round Up #6

Here is a very late issue of the 6x6 mobile photography round up on the latest things I find interesting in mobile photography and related stuff.

 

The Guardian tries citizen journalism with EE

It was encouraging to see the launch of Witness this week. Carefully not promoted as citizen journalism and a bit short on social plugins it is an interesting platform idea for the post journalism age. Apparently it’s deeply plugged into the Guardian CMS to help surface content within the paper. Some of the assignments are a bit vanilla but I am sure they will get a bit more colourful. (Love the playdoh volcano!)

 

WoW promises a lens to transform the future of mobile photography

I quite like the look of the feature packed integrated WoW Lens. I love my olloclip but having it permanently encased like the Wow lens will prompt me to use it more.

The Selfie gets some stylish wood

With all the talk about mobile photography growing up its a shame the unfortunate the poster child of the genre, the ‘selfie’, is getting so much attention. But this most narcissistic image of our Present Shock age has been beautifully rendered into wooden canvases by the artist Golpeavisa. The classy images evoke a melancholic take on the falseness of the selfie shot.

 

 

Say hello to Pongr - the mobile social photo marketing platform

Pongr has been around for a while. Their image recognition technology has been quietly developing since 2008. It seems they have recently rebooted to offer ‘solutions’ for brands to mobilise their visual assets through their Photo Response Marketing software. Its includes a  suite of gamification, direct response and shopper marketing applications where ‘brands can put their photos to work’. Pongr users can become ‘CEO’s’ of a brand by taking photos of their favourite brands and earning points and gaining super user titles. With brands thinking about investing in formal advocacy programs services like Pongr and their API will offer some interesting angles. (But the quality filters better be good!)

 

 

Memoto Lifelogging camera brings the quantified self to photography

Another Kickstarter project which is close to shipping. Memoto is a Swedish startup that mashes quantified self thinking with photography. This project looks very cool! Its a tiny automatic camera and app that gives you a searchable and shareable photographic memory. It sorts hundreds of images into ‘moments’ and stores them in the cloud so you can retrieve and ‘relive’ your visual memories. I want one!

 

 

The world’s first open community coolhunting mobile game  

iCoolhunt’s marketing jazz states it is a ‘cross platform geo-social game that lets users collaboratively identify and track emerging trends on a global scale’. A big promise. It essentially turns photo sharing into a coolhunting game. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks great. Although I do wonder whether the real cool hunters will use it?

The SixBySix Photography Round Up No.5

Say hello to Scoopshot

The citizen journalism 'sell-your-shots' market is heating up again. Scoopshot is a photo crowd-sourcing service which allows you to engage readers with photography tasks received directly on their smart-phones. With a user base of 130k mobile photographers and some nifty features (like its verification service) it is taking a lead in the real time UGC photo market.

The Impossible Instant Lab just got possible

 

A fantastic concept from The Impossible Project called the Impossible Instant Lab turns your digital photos into instant analog prints. And it looks like it will be made as they have made their Kickstarter target of $250k.

Starmatic revives an old favourite

The app Starmatic has revived the vintage Brownie camera into a retro camera app for the iphone. Hot on the heels of EyeEm's update this app hopes to carve out a space in a very saturated mobile photography space. I haven't played with it properly yet, but first impressions are very positive

Meet @thexavius: a portrait of an Instagram artist

 

A brilliant parody of a much maligned art!

Wish I was at Luminance...

Luminance in New York kicks off today and I so wish I was there. Billed as a photography conference at the 'intersection of culture, technology and business' it promises to deliver some good talks by a good range of speakers. You can follow the talks via #luminance on Twitter. 

Future of Photography is going to be hacked

Berlin plays host to Photo Hack Day on Sept 28th where the most innovative developers and designers have been invited to hack the future of photography. The goal of the event is to rapidly prototype and build new projects. Check out their fascinating list of hack ideas.

What does the iphone 5 mean for mobile photography?

So its arrived. The iphone 5 in all its shiny glory has been unveiled.

But what does the new device mean for mobile photographers?

Here's my quick summary of how the new major features pan out:

1. Big screen = big love

A bigger screen means more space to review and edit images on the go. Just think of all those albums and images revelling in the 16:9 aspect ratio and 4inch crisp retina screen. An extra 5th row of icons - think your mobile photography studio!

Instagram banks on photo meta data to tell better stories

The Instagram 3.0 update has landed.

The focus has been on a wholesale browsing update, with cleaner lines and much faster response rates and is all part of making Instagram an industrial strength social platform ready to serve the next round of user growth.

However, the feature that has got the most attention is the photo map. A feature that surfaces photos that have been geo tagged into a map you can explore. Including people you follow.

I think the map is a great idea. But the actual user experience is not stand out. On a tiny screen you can't really get that immersive map experience you get with a desktop. But perhaps that will be handled via the Instagram API ecosystem.

However, the map and its use of geo data, points to a much more interesting future development. One where data and visual storytelling is overlapping.

This course of development was evident in the media frenzy and this most noticeable quote from Instagram's CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom:

“Photos without meta-data are just photos, but with meta-data you can start to do very interesting things.....you can tell the story of your life or events....we are creating a signal and hopefully in the future we can surface events or news happenings.” 

The faint whiff of a business model here? Surfacing news events, brought to you with sponsored photos percolating in your stream perhaps? 

This has moved beyond users just taking photos. Instagram fundamentally wants to encourage new user behaviours like curation and discovery. They want users to think about the total storytelling potential of their stream. 

With this update the prospect of social mobile photography is begining to take shape. Where real time and re-imagined 'albums' of life events are discovered through meta narratives using the data of photos. Where scocial context and geography turn pictures into a myriad of decisive moments, micro communities and global canvasses. 

Instagram is well on its way to become the visual social signal for the planet.

Look out Twitter. 

Instagram and the Olympics: the numbers

So the numbers are in for Instagram and London 2012. And its gold!

_{(Source: VenueSeen)}

Brand adoption of Instagram continues to grow

The march of Instagram continues.

It was reported this week that 40% of the worlds leading brands are now active on Instagram.

Timed to launch their new Instagram analytics tool, Simply Measured published a study of how the top 100 interbrand brands are using Instagram.

One of the key insights from the report was how luxury brands are using the platform. Brands like Burberry have been trailblazers of course, but other established fashion brands like Armani are quickly adapting their engagement strategies to incorporate social mobile photography.

It's also interesting that there is a low correlation between the number of followers and engagement as a % of followers, suggesting that the network effect on a brand by brand basis may be limited. To counter this I am sure brands are lobbying Instagram to implement a share button soon!

Whilst 40% adoption may sound like a lot for a platform that is only 2 years old, as Instagram approaches 100m users and the next stage of its development I expect to see more brands flock to platforms where they can develop visual engagement strategies. 

You can read the full report here:  

Instagram Brand Adoption Study from Simply Measured

The SixBySix Photography Round Up No.4

Instagram Gets a Kick In Again 

In typical Guardian fashion Instagram got pulled apart this week and not without a response by incensed bloggers . The article seemed to think that Instagram was somehow 'debasing photography'. I am so bored of this preachy and aristocratic viewpoint. By making the point all about filters, the writer completely missed the point about how social mobile photography is changing the very nature of media itself.

Olympic Robo Cameras

As London 2012 approaches, thousands of photographers will be hitting London to capture the perfect olympic shot. But some people are going to the extremes to get the shot. Check out the geekery of these photo robo cams. 

Capturing Libya through Hipstamatic

Read this great interview with Ben Lowy on how he captured Libya using his iphone and Hipstamatic. A perfect example of how mobile photography is disrupting the conventions of journalism. 

The SixBySix Photography Round Up No.3

Check out the 'Iris Camera': a camera controlled by your eye 

I recently checked out the RCA postgraduate show and found a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye. Designed by Mimi Zou, a London based designer, the camera understands who you are by looking at your Iris signature and lets you capture exactly what you see by tracking your eye. It's a really interesting concept, although I wonder how practical it might be. Combine this with face recognition and you have the perfect storm! 

 

 

Capturing smiles around the world with the Yoko Ono mobile photography app

I also went to the Yoko Ono exhibition at the Serpentine recently which was a massive disappointment. However, her latest mobile photography project promises to be so much more rewarding. Say hello to #smilesfilm an app which compiles all of the pictures of people’s smiles taken and uploaded to either Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #smilesfilm. 

 

Smartphones are no longer phones they are passports to your digital life

A new survey in the UK found that while people spend just three minutes a day taking photographs, photography was the most popular thing to use a smartphone for, with 74 per cent saying that they had taken photos with their handset. Plus a whopping 17 mins 9 seconds is spent on social media, second only to mobile internet use. The future of social mobile photography is safe!

Introducing LoFiMode

 

I love this promo video for LoFiMode. It sums up why I think photography is experiencing its most dramatic rejuvenation in decades.

My SixBySix photography roundup No.1

Why instagram is terrible for photographers

Photoshelter agonise about the dilemma that 'proper' photographers have with their love hate relationship with Instagram.

Say hello to Piccys

I found Piccsy this week. A nifty new photo discovery tool. Its pretty good, with some nice niche images to get lost in...

Photography vs. iphoneography

Here is an interesting curation concept where iphoneographers go head to head with photographers at this exhibition.

Mobile Photography Awards

Here is a great showcase mobile photography illustrating how creative and sophisticated the genre is becoming.  

Instagrammers in demand by major brands

Interesting article about how (unsurprisingly) brands are really knocking on the door to do business at the altar of Instagram. Interesting that its written by @bridif founder of InstammgersNYC and who has just launched a creative agency helping brands activate campaigns on Instagram.

Instagram brand activation case studies

More detailed coverage on how gobal brands are engaging with Instagram's 50m users. The article profiles 12 different brands and their Instagram tactics, from 'instawalks' to influencer marketing.

_{(Photo credit: me)}

Instacanvas - the marketplace for Instagram prints

The stream of Instagram periphery apps continues unabated.

Say hello to Instacanvas.

Instacanvas is a marketplace for instagrammers to buy and sell their instagram images.

The site has recently come out of beta and has already over 30,000 galleries open. The Instagram sale to Facebook has put rocket fuel into its user acquisition activity with demand exceeding server space.

It took a while to get my gallery opened - I had to take this photo to plead for it to be opened - but it was worth the wait. I can now see all my images in glorious detail and secretly hope someone out there might want to buy one...one day...

Prints start at $39.95 for a 12" x 12' frames and up to $79 for 20" x 20" canvases. Instacanvas make 20% of the sale of each item sold.

I'll post back if I sell one!

Facebook Camera App Review: an Instagram for the masses?

Have Facebook gone mad?

Only a month after they bought Instagram and days after their chaotic IPO they have launched their own camera app. Producing some disbelief and puzzled commentators along the way.

So have they gone mad?

Not quite. This is part post IPO pipeline strategy and part of the beginning of their ongoing improvement to their mobile strategy. Recognising that photos really are the currency of the social web the camera app goes some way to delivering on their promise of a better mobile user experience.

Aesthetically the app has a lovely minimalistic feel to it. The app designers have really thought through some nifty usability areas like quick easy access to photos on your camera roll and browsing through a photo only friend feed. It feels and smells like Facebook, but is a much slicker experience than their core app. 

Functionally, it is ok, but clearly targetted to a less demanding mobile photography user. Uploading functions are good, including a feature for large multiple image uploads.

The ability to see photos within your stream from other photo apps, like Camera+, Foodspotting is a good development. Facebook clearly want to celebrate everything image based with this app.  

However, there are some significant and serious downsides.

The filter options are very poor. Almost all are just white balance variations with really uninspired names like 'chocolate'. And there are very limited creative options to edit images, which is disappointing given how long this app has been in development.

This is definitely not an Instagram killer or a replacement app, but it is a dramatic improvement on their nascent mobile strategy.

The launch is definitely in keeping with their done is better than perfect mantra. And its clear that the Instagram team had nothing to do with its final development.

This app will certainly accelerate the growth of social mobile photography everywhere. By reaching out to a large non instagrammer audience base, Facebook are signalling that social mobile photography is the main competitive theatre of operations on the social web.

Final Verdict: Getting better, but certainly not great. Nice usability and some slick design in areas. But strangely the sharing options are limited and creative editing options are very basic. Expect to see some quick improvements to this release very soon. And where is the integration with Instagram?