The Future, or a Future? (or, straddling past, present and future)

Another Weekly Photo Challenge featuring phone photography – the challenge is, Future Tense!

I don’t think taking pictures with mobile devices is THE future of photography, but I suppose it is A future; one among many.

And adding effects with apps? Another future.

So in honor of camera phones, apps and playfulness, here are nine pictures taken with my phone

(a Droid Samsung) and processed with a single app: Pixlr ‘omatic.

Have you noticed how many popular app effects are evocative of the past?

They tempt me, you can see that.

So here I am, in the present, using a technology of the future to create images from the past…

More Weekly Photo Challenge photos can be seen here.

APP

A few days ago I downloaded an Android app called Photogrid. It puts your phone photos into collages.

A shake of the phone produces a new arrangement (you pick frame styles & colors) –

Here’s a grid of road trips in the Pacific Northwest:

Here’s another arrangement of the same images:

This one is a mash-up of

Buddhas,

flora,

rain on the car window (near Seattle of course)

a hand,

and street shots in New York & Seattle:

I don’t think you can change the placement of the images by dragging them around – that would be even better.

But sometimes random choices produce juxtapositions you wouldn’t have thought of, and they’re really nice –

(yes, John Cage figured that out long ago).

I think I like this one best:

And the app is free!