Dailybooth

I was running around on Flickr one fine day, and I came across a brilliant photographer called Teppo. He's currently doing a project called 365, in which he takes a photo every day. I think this is a brilliant way to stretch oneself as a photographer. It's always good to get as much practice in as possible, and doing something daily is a great way to stay dedicated to that practice.

So I looked into the 365 project a little more and found a website that has that as the premise. It's called Dailybooth. But it's a little bit different than Teppo's project. It is designed so that users take one photo a day in order to see how they have changed over an amount of time.

But of course, as with almost all technology, it's never used entirely how it's intended to be. Several Dailybooth users use the website as a creative photography outlet, where they can get feedback from a real community. Dailybooth is large enough that there is a big enough crowd of viewers and commenters, but small enough that everyone is fairly connected with everyone else.

Dailybooth is a social photography site based on the idea of a daily photo, which originated with Teppo. This sort of daily photo project can be done for several reasons: to preserve history and nostalgia, and to improve as a photographer.

Poladroid

I found a really great application, which works for both Mac and PC. It's called Poladroid. It easily turns your JPEG images into digital polaroids. But it's quirky. Like an actual polaroid, these polaroids take time to develop, and if you shake it, it develops faster. But the wait is worth it, because the images it produces are great.

It's still in beta testing, though, so it has a few problems. The application doesn't automatically come to the front when switching to it from another application. But other than that, this is a brilliant application.

This app is designed for people who have an interest in old, lo-fi photography, for people who are nostalgic about a dying medium, or for people who just like interesting looking photos. This is a seriously fun app for anyone who likes to play with images.

Poladroid is already making its way around social-networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, but it's still in its Early Adapter stage. It's starting to tip. It's not super popular just yet, but I imagine it soon will be, considering the growing photo-editing trend (Picassa, Picnik, etc.). I anticipate that in a few years, there will be editors like this for tons of other types of old photos. Already there is one to make photos look like they were from the 1800's.