Hipstamatic

This month after having Verizon as a wireless cell phone carrier for five years we decided to go to AT&T as our provider. The main draw was for the IPhone4. I have used a simple cell phone and a Blackberry smartphone. I must admit I do like all of the bells and whistles of the IPhone. The phone allows me to do several things at once and I can say that is something that many phones do not allow. Not to mention that it also has a feature called facetime( a true video phone call).  A dream growing up for many kids and adults was to be able to see the person you were calling now no longer science fiction. Applications now shortened to Apps has made the IPhone very popular. Apps are programs that run on the IPhone that can be purchased for use on the device.
One popular App is Hipstamatic. A program that uses the IPhone's camera and processes them with a vintage look that seems to be very hip (obvious pun) these days.Many consumers today want image manipulation to look like a seventies McCall's magazine.  As a child of the seventies, I know what my family album looks like and Hipstamatic is on the mark.   Being optimistic, I think the program pays homage to the craft itself. One aspect of programs like this is people are making images.  I have been using the Hipstamatic App for a couple of weeks now and not worrying about film speed, f-stops, and exposure is a nice for a change. Just letting the photography universe be.

Below are some images made with the App which allows the the use different effects( referred to as lenses and film)  within the program to manipulate the image being made.

   

This is Lucifer and may be the death of me.

Canning Day

This Labor Day weekend found Melissa and I, canning our bounty of garden tomatoes. Well, the first round anyway. The process is pretty straight forward. Scald the tomatoes first in boiling water. Then blanch them in cold water and remove the skins. The next step in our case was to half or quarter them and the place them into sterilized jars. We added lemon juice and salt to the tomatoes to help with the  preservation process. Once the jars were filled we put on the lids and boiled the for about 45 minutes in our large stock pot. We will be repeating the process again this week as the second round of tomatoes ripen.