My favourite picture from the last few weeks.

I restarted a 365 project this year with taking a photo-a-day. I talked at the start of the year about the reasons for stopping and restarting. So far, I’ve not missed a day. I mostly use the suggested photo from Today’s Posting, but not always, I’ve taken liberties with my shooting and done more slice-of-life photos than photos-as-art photos.

The real change this year has been the move to the iPad as my photo editor of choice. I looked back through the 70+ photos from 2013, and I haven’t edited one of them on my computer.  In fact, the majority of the photos have been taken with my iPhone 4S, rather than my DSLR. The ease of the workflow has been astounding. For the phone pics, by setting up Photostream between my devices, any picture I take is automatically zipped over to the iPad, where I then edit and upload using a few choice apps. If I take pics with my Canon Rebel DSLR, I simply pop in the camera connection kit, pop in the SD card and upload to the iPad, then proceed to editing.  Most pics have been edited on the iPad in my favourite easy chair, for the most part.

As for the apps, this is where I’ve noticed the speed of the workflow increase significantly. Rather than firing up Photoshop or Aperture or iPhoto on my computer, I simply launch one of a few choice apps. I like the official Flickr iPhone app for use on the phone, but they don’t yet have an iPad specific version. The two that I find myself using most often are Flickrstackr and Camera! Awesome.  Flickrstackr is great for basic photo edits, and uploading to my Flickr account. In fact, if they had commenting features added in, Flickrstackr would be just about perfect for photo managing and social networking on Flickr.  Camera Awesome has become my go-to app for filters and effects. I’ve bought the add-on packs to have a few 100K of options for filters and effects. It’s pretty easy to find one that fits the pic that you’ve taken.

There are a few others that have been useful and I’ve played with a bit including Photoshop Touch, iPhoto, ColorSplash, Snapseed and Dipic.

So photo taking has become fun again. Combine the ease of a great camera that goes everywhere I go in my pocket, and the ease and fun of editing and uploading and I’ve got a process that’s a ton of fun.

40 mm lens for my DSLR.