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ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

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One of my favourite and most enduring iPhone photography apps is ‘Hipstamatic’. It’s been around for many years now and has been updated into two versions, a subscription based version aimed at social media and photo sharing and a classic version, which originally had monthly updates with optional features that users could choose to purchase. The basic idea is to recreate an analogue experience on the phone, by using a film emulation, lens and optional flash, to turn the phone into an analogue style camera. In this, it works extremely well and the various packs can be interchanged endlessly to create combinations of the three elements, to suit personal tastes. Mostly, the purchased packs provide a distinct and interesting set of effects in the app.Since the second version was released a few years ago, Classic is still supported but on a less frequent basis, with new packs appearing around every two months. Generally, the packs are themed on a style, movement or a geographical area. The...
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A SECOND IRON AGE

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 Ten years ago, I was working for the Communications Team in the NHS in Sefton and we took delivery of a new camera to use for press coverage. A Canon EOS 550D with a 55mm lens arrived in the office and it was the first opportunity I had to examine a professional level digital camera. Although, not exactly a high end, studio quality model, compared to the tiny compact point and shoots I had been used to, it was a very capable device. Previously, we had been using a small Fuji camera with a fixed lens, which was quite good, but nowhere near the quality offered by a Canon. Making up an excuse to put the camera through its paces, I took it home one evening to look it over and then the following morning, stopped off at Crosby Marina on my way into work in Merseyside. In 2005 Crosby had been chosen as the location of an art installation by Anthony Gormley, consisting of 100 cast iron figures, distributed along the beach a kilometre into the tideline. 'Another Place' consists of full...
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