“Photography is About Depth of Feeling, Not Depth of Field.” – Photographer Peter Adams

Peter Adams is on to something I think.  Even though I love a simple, classic, thoughtfully composed photo (especially in black and white) and often strive for that with my Canon 7D, I also love the ability to evoke emotion with smart choices in colour and effect.  This week I got an invitation to try out a new app from the folks at Hipstamatic, my favourite iPhone photo app. Hipstamatic was the first best-selling iPhone app until filter-friendly, easy-to-use Instagram arrived on the scene, gulping up users along the way. Hipstamatic has always been known as a more artistic app, with a strong community of photographers sharing favourite lens and film combinations. The challenge is the vast number of lens and film combinations that you need to learn and choose wisely BEFORE you take a picture. With Instagram, you shoot and then select.  In a camera/phone format that celebrates the easy, frictionless share, Hipstamatic can be seen as too much effort, even though the payoff is often much greater with a beautiful, emotionally compelling end result. A change was needed.

So this week Hipstamatic released a brand new app and community called Oggl. The primary change between their original app and Oggl is the iPhoneographer’s ability to concentrate on composition first, then make the choice of a film/lens combination that best tells that shot’s story in the editing process. It is a simple, yet appreciated improvement. You can see some of my creations in the collage above. The new app is also elegantly simple, with a modern, clean and easy to navigate user interface. It is too early to comment on the Oggl community, but it is safe to say that the quality of the lenses and film make participation motivating. You can learn more about the Oggl app here, and if you have an iPhone, join me in this new community and let’s see if we can give the “check-out-my-supper-and-cat” Instagram crowd (and yes, that includes me) a run for its money.

Before I leave you, I would like to thank author Christopher Bonanos for an unexpected and appreciated exchange this week. As you may know, my last three posts (here, here, and here) focused on aspects of Bonanos’ book Instant: The Story of Polaroid, an engaging, immersive read. Christopher, in the midst of writing his next book, shared that he knew the story of Polaroid would make a compelling book when it proved to have a natural beginning, middle and end, “plus a coda” in the Impossible Project, and an intriguing central character in Edwin Land. I couldn’t agree more. After spending the last 18 years toiling in the publishing industry, I found the rise and fall of Polaroid to be an instructive cautionary tale. I also found the parallels between the inventor-genius Land and Steve Jobs fascinating. In fact, Bonanos wrote a memorial for Jobs in the week following his death in the New York Times, where  he shares the connections between the two “inventor-entrepreneurs” in this article dated October 7, 2011. It is worth a read, as is this week’s Brain Picking’s story on Land and his contributions.

Next week, I will take a closer look at the somewhat chilling parallels between the impact of the digital revolution on photography and the publishing industry. Will publishing witness an “Impossible Project” of its own in the near future? Until then, have a great week dear readers!

I’m off to don my lucky Mike Palmateer jersey and cheer my beloved Maple Leafs on to playoff victory. Go Leafs Go!