Shake it like a....

I've never been one for Photoshop filters, considering them a cop out unless used with great subtlety and sparingly.  It must be the photo snob in me who thinks, "That's cheating!"  But I just downloaded some fun iPhone apps that make your photos looks like old school Polaroids and I must admit I do like the results, a lot!

On a side note, I was never one to use Polaroids in artistic endeavors, except as test shots for large format cameras.  Still, it's sad that they no longer make them.  The sticky goo left on your fingers with that fresh chemical smell still makes me nostalgic (and, I apologize to future children in cases these toxins have seeped into my body.)

I downloaded ShakeItPhoto ($.99) , Polomoid ($1.99), and PhotoFilters (free).  Photofilters is just the color filters included in the Polomoid app.

Polomoid is kind of annoying, because it takes your photos and seems to force a landscape orientation, ending in some weird cropping.  But I do like the filters that make your photos look as if they'd been sitting in the sun, or the chemicals have started to go funny.  I had better luck using  ShakeItPhoto to come up with a composition I liked and then the free Photofilters to tweak the colors a bit.  Any of these apps may be applied to a picture you are about to take or stored on your iphone, and you have the option to keep a copy of the original photo.

Also, ShakeItPhoto lets you shake your iphone whilte the photo "develops"  to simulate the action made immortal by Outkast's "Hey Ya!"

What is it about the Polaroid look that is so fun?  I think partially it is the framing element.  Pictures automatically look just so much more finished, official, formal, what have you, with a frame.  It makes it sort of more precious (in terms of being cute, not valuable.)  For instance, I took these three so-so pictures which I didn't feel much about and after some app action, I kinda like them a lot more.  They look more special...or maybe what I needed all along was more contrast, color pop. 

I wonder if future generations will also get the nostalgic feeling people of my (and older) generations do?  Or does anything old give off that nostalgia? Hm.  In any case, I am personally a sucker for the funky colors of old chemicals, or the cross-processed look.

I tried the look on some of my "artsy" photographs - that is, NOT snapshots, and things I had set up, lit, posed very carefully and I don't like how these two have turned out.  Maybe it's because I already cropped and framed them, or just that I had spent a lot of time getting them to look just so.  Or, this look isn't for everything...but if I can get this to be decent quality I would consider printing out some of the other "snapshots" to a larger format for home decoration, instead of just decorating my facebook or computer hard drives.

Anyhow, fun new toys, so you can expect a few fake old photographs to pop up in future posts. :)