App Love: Over

Over - add beautiful text to your photos. This is it. So it is.  Yes, this will be now the shortest app love update ever. Or perhaps not.

I discovered the app this summer and had good time playing with, because you really have nothing much to do on a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki or the other way around. Unless you like slot machines. Or karaoke. Or preferably both. 

So I took my time to read and to add some text to my photos on my iPhone. All photos edited with VSCO Cam (app love - read here) and some also with Instagram (another app love - check out more here). 

I just love the different choice of fonts (and I haven't even bought anything extra, it's the "standard package"). Still really good.

Oh and if you happen to be in Helsinki check out this exhibition. Modern day instagrammers and photoshoppers etc have nothing on the peeps who were into surreal photography about a century ago! Or rather - there's nothing new in heavy image manipulation and wild fantasies. 

Just like this, me and my fish say hi! 

Happy mid-week!

xx

App Love: VSCO Cam

Get VSCO Cam - it's lovely and it's for free! I will demonstrate my love for this app with some snap shots from my recent trip to Poznan, Poland. I spent my alone time (as we all arrived at different times and came from different locations) to play around with the freshly downloaded app. And of course, taking photos of my food. What's with that, really?! Why do I do that?! I eat with my eyes?! With my iPhone?! I wish... Anyhow, all of the photos below have been taken with iPhone 4S and edited with VSCO Cam app (yup, you can take photos with it or edit the ones you have taken previously). 

First of all, I LOVE flying! Seriously, it's as close to living in a magical cotton candy land as one can get. What's there not to love?!

And I love plane food. No joke. Maybe it's all programmed in me as I first boarded a plane when I was a newborn. Okay, it only took us 20min to an island, but you know, my body was all like - yeah, kicking ass in the air! Plane food is like a surprise egg - you never know what's inside! Sometimes you can also be left puzzled what was it that you ate. Still, I approve.

Not to mention that anything tastes good with the amazing sky high views.

I think one very legit reason to get excited over a meal is the fact (no, not that it's a surprise on a plane) that it is something simple you love, but haven't had for ages. Like cottage cheese. And potatoes in a non french fry mode. I almost weeped when I shoveled this in at this lovely artsy place in Poznan.

A really lovely place with origami birds and all.

I don't have that many iPhone shots from Poznan as I used my real camera for the bigger part of the time. Also, spent most of Monday at a mall with friends. Drinking coffee. Eating. Chatting. Doing a tiny bit of shopping. It was the post-party day. No-one was up for I dunno... hiking or museums. Luckily museums are closed on Mondays, so no bad conscious there. Moreover, the mall looked real nice. 

And they had a neat cafe with peonies (yay, flower-love) and pretty cups of coffee.

I have a ton of photos of Poznan waiting to be edited. I think it's a town where Southern Germany meets Berlin. It has a bit of all. Yeah, well, maybe it's weird to compare it to German towns, but I have been to a bunch of German towns. So well. There you go. Poznan is lovely. It has a river! A river makes any place more special.

And it has a fun biker monument. 

And quirky ice cream. With cactus flavor for example. Yes, I did eat that neon sweet thing.

It was four days and three nights. Spending time with some of the best people ever. And then it was back on the plane. Luckily Lufthansa still provides free newspapers and coffee at its Munich terminal. I love reading fancy newspapers (e.g. "International Herald Tribune" and "The Financial Times") when I travel. Plus you know, coffee-coffee-coffee.

However, my flight from Munich was delayed and I had finished reading my book. Oh and my gate was next to a cutsie cute design shop. There. I am an easy target to those people trying to sell useless (nooo, cute things are cute, not useless) stuff. 

See, there you go, I LOVE taking photos with my iPhone and then editing them a bit and sharing. Life is good as long as there's a camera, any camera. 

Time to wrap up the midnight story telling. Have a good weekend and see you on Sunday for some 'in the air' photos. 

xoxo

App Love: A Beautiful Mess

One of my all time favorite blogs is A Beautiful Mess. I have been reading it for over a year, maybe two years. I was first drawn to it because all of those fun DIY projects, but all in all - it's all just so fun there. Everything just looks so good. Girlie, yes. But not overly pink and fluffy, if you know what I mean. :) So yeah, I was totally psyched when I read that they'll release their own photo editing app. 

 & Instagram

It's pretty straightforward: crop (square), filters, borders, text, doodles, phrases. While there are all those apps which let you crop and add filters (see my previous app love posts about Instagram and Afterlight) then my interest was primarily targeted towards adding cute stuff to images, like words and doodles. 

At firs I was a little concerned that what if this app will turn all photos the same with the same handwriting you know and same style. Hey, but we all have our own ways to use the tools and if you look through images with #abeautifulmess then you see that while using the same borders, doodles and handwriting all those images look different. They just add to the original image. And people see things so differently.

& Instagram

Yup, I love publishing the images through Instagram (follow me!) and sometimes add an additional filter. Plus I love how you can just point out things in the photo without too many additional words. On the go. 

& Instagram

& Instagram

& Instagram

I love that you can add your own text in different handwriting. 

& Instagram

Sometimes it's just silly fun all the way. That's how I cook. It's a whole system.

And sometimes you have all this new music and you are short of words.

& Instagram

This app is a keeper. Though I might be overusing it a bit at the moment, but ever so often images say more than words, so... :) 

xoxo

App Love: Magic Hour

Always up for chasing some perfect light, yes, that's me. So, obviously you can lure me out of my cave whenever it's the golden hour. 

Golden hour aka magic hour is the greatest time of the day if you're all about catching beautiful light with your camera. Totally like on the photo below. Impressive, aye?!

Sunset in Cadiz, Spain
Olympus E-420, 25mm

So, yes, there's this magical time around sunrise and sunset. Obviously you can just see it, but it's a whole lot better if you can predict it and plan on going to a location just for the right time. Therefore I am more than happy to share my love for Magic Hour app. Simple tool that lets you know when the magic hits the town (the hills and the fields, too). Oh and it's for free and let's you set reminders. All you really need, nothing less, nothing more. 

Here are some of my recent golden hour shots. 

Cadiz, Spain
Olympus E-420, 25mm

Ronda, Spain (morning golden hour)
Olympus E-420, 25mm

Sacre Coeur, Paris, France
Olympus E-420, 25mm

Gent, Belgium (golden hour on a rainy day)
Olympus E-420, 25mm

One little thing that well, is totally obvious, but sometimes slips my mind. Golden hour's magical light doesn't really work if you're in a city with narrow streets and tall buildings. The sun is so low that it just doesn't reach there. You can kind of get the idea on the photo below. There's some golden light on the little square, but none on the narrow streets.

Montmartre, Paris, France
Olympus E-420, 25mm

So, how does it feel? Are you up for scheduling your photo walks during the golden hour... even in the mornings?! ;) 

xoxo

App Love: Hipstamatic

Time for an app love update! Planning this post re-united me with an old crush called Hipstamatic. So we spent a day taking fun shots and enjoying a lot of exciting art - yes, it is one of my favourite weeks of the year, the time for ARCO Madrid - International Contemporary Art Fair!

So as you might have guessed Hipstamatic is something hipsters might love - photos come with this old film camera kind of look. Yup, that's it. It's your old school film camera and a pile of film rolls tucked into your smartphone. You can hand pick your "film" and "lens" and "flash". You also don't see the photo on the screen right away, but need to wait for the "film" to be "developed". I must say my favorite option is to let the app choose a random film-lens combo for me (just shake the phone and you get a new combination). So the same location can offer differing results. It's maybe like shooting with a Soviet film camera using expired film - there's surely an element of surprise.

Thinking of getting one of those old school film cameras? Get Hipstamatic first - it's cheaper, handier and packed with retro look and surprises.

And last, but not least I'd like to end with a quote I stumbled upon today: "All you need is love and more coffee." 

xoxo