Flare: Photographic Effects App

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I am not a huge fan of the Instagram or Hipstamatic apps, although I see that a number of other photographers use them frequently when using their iPhones et al. If Asim Rafiqui, the quintessential Leica user, uses Instagram photos to illustrate his phenomenal The Idea of India project, there might be something to it.

Through a tweet on my Twitter page, I came to know Flare which describes itself as "a fast, easy, and beautiful darkroom for your desktop". So I decided to try it out and see what all the fuss was in these apps. I don't own an iPhone (I'm a BlackBerry kind of guy), so this seemed to be an alternative.

Downloading Flare (there's a 15 days trial period) I applied photographic effects to a couple of my photographs, as can be seen above in my Lou Reed Graffiti shot. It comes with more than 20 presets, which can also be edited by users. Flare also allows users to come up with their own presets. For those like me who are not joined at the hip to their Photoshop or Lightroom, Flare is a matter of drag and drop...mere seconds to get the preset look you like.

Ingenious, huh? And fun. The photograph above was originally shot using a M9.

And for more fun...how about this one of the porters at the Old Delhi spice alley? The Flare preset is called "Molga". Click on it for a larger size.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Zite: An iPad App

Having noticed that a fair chunk of visits to The Travel Photographer blog come from a Zite.com source, I looked it up and discovered that it's a free new iPad app called Zite, a personalized magazine that accurately targets your reading preferences.

I tried it yesterday, and I'm quite impressed with it. I chose Photography and Photojournalism as two of my sections on it, and it pulled out some interesting articles from a variety of source...including from The Travel Photographer blog. In fact, a bunch of my recent posts appear under both the Photography and Photojournalism sections...and this one will probably make it as well.

Here's a review on the Wall Street Journal.

ps. I have no connection with Zite. It's just an app that I happen to like.

New Sponsor: PhotoShelter

Regular readers of The Travel Photographer blog may have noticed the small PhotoShelter ad on the right sidebar. Yes, PhotoShelter has become a sponsor of this blog because I believe its products are tremendously useful to photographers and photojournalists and this is reflected by its impressive list of clients....some of who are friends and acquaintances.

I, too, have now joined PhotoShelter not because I needed another website, but because I wanted an online archive and lightboxing system, and a sales mechanism for my images. I know that the many photographers and photojournalists who constitute the bulk of my readership will benefit by joining and using PhotoShelter if they haven't already.

The PhotoShelter ad will appear in the sidebar of this site, any paid signups that occur through links on The Travel Photographer will generate a commission**, and I will occasionally write a post about how and when PhotoShelter has worked for me.  The site will remain editorially and fiercely independent as always.

If you’ve ever considered signing up for online archive and purchasing system, click on the link on the sidebar. It only costs $1 to get started on PhotoShelter on a 2-week trial.  You will be doing your photography business a favor.

** All commissions will be donated to the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, and aimed right back at helping emerging and aspiring photojournalists.

Western Digital iPad App

Hmmmm.....that's interesting.

Western Digital announced a free photo viewing application called WD Photos for the iPad that works with its line of external storage products like the My Book World Edition, My Book Live, and WD ShareSpace.  The app is said to allow the user to access up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder.

The advantage in this is that saved images can be accessed using the app from anywhere through a web connection. The benefits to photographers are obvious...for instance, while traveling I could show my portfolio to anyone in the world on my iPad using this app. The app has pinch and zoom functionality,  and the images can be viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution on the iPad.

However,  wouldn't it be phenomenal if the iPad could connect to a portable external drive, on which I could download my travel photographs as I made them in the field? Once the photographs were saved on the portable drive, I could then use this app to access them (at least the jpegs) through a web connection.

S&F™ Lowepro: MultiMedia Photographer

Here's what is fantastic about being ad-free and not beholden to any manufacturer (or retailer)...I am free in liking or disliking any product I want, and mention my opinion on my blog. I'm not paid to flog a particular product and ignore others that I like. I can use a product from ABC and another from XYZ...I have no particular loyalty to any manufacturer (unless it produces exceptionally good products), nor do I follow a fad...nor another photographer. I like what I like...period.

Now, I happen to like some of the Lowepro products, and I've used a couple of them myself. I use a Top Loader Pro bought in 2000 or 2001 that still works perfectly well, except for one of its zippers that doesn't work any more...it's been badly abused for the past 10 years, and it's grubby...but that's how I like my stuff. I also have a Lowepro backpack and a Stealth Reporter shoulder bag that I seldom use now, but in their heyday, they were great.

I suppose Lowepro realized it had to come up with a separate line of products for the growing number of multimedia photographers, perhaps following Think Tank which also has an interesting product line, and has recently launched the S&F™ Lowepro for the Multimedia Photographer products, which consist of S&F™ Technical Harness with S&F™ Light Utility Belt, S&F™ Slim Lens Pouch 75 AW & 55 AW, S&F™ Audio Utility Bag 100, S&F™ Laptop Utility Backpack 100 AW, S&F™ Lens Exchange Case 200 AW and S&F™ Transport Duffle Backpack.

I am only interested in the S&F™ Audio Utility Bag 100 at this stage, so I'll probably pop in one of the two photography retailers closest to me, and check it out.

I am still enthralled by my The Travel Photographer Pouches, so it'll be difficult to pry them from my hands...but one never knows.