Friday night the sky lit up at sunset. Joan and I headed to North Beach in San Clemente, where I captured this shot from the lawn in front of the Ole Hanson Beach Club, using my iPhone 4.

Day 273 of Project 365.

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I recently purged about 1,000 photos from my iPhone, but Photo Stats didn’t mind. It still created the following, beautiful infographic that analyzed the 266 photos still on my iPhone.

Photo Stats will show you where, when and how you took your photos, with location, time of day, your “most productive” days and various photo properties like portrait vs. landscape, ISO setting and photo app used.

The $0.99 price is reasonable, although they say it’s a promotion only good for the first week. After that, it goes up to a whopping $1.99 (still a deal, in my book). Go get Photo Stats, and share a link to your Photo Stats in the comments below.

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Here are the first 99 photos:

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For years, I favored Canon’s compact point-and-shoot line. They are fast and produce great shots. This is exactly what I used last year when I hiked the John Muir Trail, and it served me well.

But more and more, I find myself using my iPhone for photography. It’s convenient (I always have my phone nearby) and coupled with the wonderful photo apps for the iPhone, it’s a blast! The apps encourage experimentation and photographic “play” — which is right up my alley.

Of course, one of the problems with apps is that there are so damn many of them. How do you find the good ones? And so, I present to you my list — the good ones — the iPhone photography apps worth getting.

Instagram

Instagram is a pretty basic app, but it’s so damned fun to play with! You can snap a photo “live” with the app or retrieve one from your photo library. Instagram will ask you to scale and crop it to a square format. That’s right, all Instagram-generated images are square. You can then apply any of a number of old school film-like effects that will make your photo look like a faded old polaroid or a Kodachrome print from the ’70s. Check out a few of my Instagram photos to get an idea of what you can do with it.

The latest version adds the ability to apply an effective tilt-shift effect for creating “miniature” scenes. But where Instagram really shines is in the social aspect. You can create friends (importing from Facebook or Twitter) and view their Instagram “streams” with likes and comments much like Facebook. And you can share your Instagram creations easily. Once you configure it, with one click you can upload to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, and other services.

Instagram is currently my favorite iPhone photo app, and well worth the price (FREE!).  Don’t think, just get Instagram.

Slow Shutter Cam

Slow Shutter Cam is a recent addition to my iPhone photo app toolkit, but WOW — what results! It allows you to create those really cool looking slow shutter images that normally you’d need a much fancier camera to create. You’ll need a tripod for decent results (I like the GorillaMobile for the iPhone), but it’s a lot of fun.

This shot isn’t the best example, but it was one of my first creations with Slow Shutter Cam. This is actually the local train passing by. Interesting that it captured the light but the train itself became essentially “invisible.”

This app does a great job of capturing night scenes with traffic passing by, or running water, or any number of special photographic effects where you want to capture the sense of movement. Fun stuff. It’s $0.99, and worth it. Get Slow Shutter Cam.

Pro HDR

HDR effects are easily achieved on the iPhone with this great app. It takes two photos, so it works best with a tripod and a stationary subject. But the results can be stunning. Get Pro HDR; it’s only $1.99.

Here’s an example I created with Pro HDR:

AutoStitch

The forth and final must-have photo app on my list is AutoStitch. This let’s you create panoramic images with remarkable ease. They aren’t always perfect, but they are damned good considering how easy it is. I know; I’ve used a number of desktop apps on both Windows and Mac and spent hours generating panoramas. This does the same thing, on your iPhone, in just a few minutes.

Basically you take a series of overlapping photos, turning a few degrees between each shot. Then in AutoStitch, you drag the photos into a pool and let it rip. A few minutes later, you have a panorama! AutoStitch is also just $1.99. Get it!

There you have it — four great photography apps for your iPhone. If you haven’t had a chance to experiment with any photo apps, these are a good place to start. And if you know of some other apps that I should check, leave a comment and let me know.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I honestly don’t know how the pros do it, but thanks to the ReelMoments iPhone app, you can join in the fun. Here’s an example that I shot this evening. I used my GorillaMobile iPhone 4 tripod (which rocks), pointed the camera out my living room window and let it run.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can take this a step further using iMovie for the iPhone to add in a soundtrack, like I did for this sunset at Doheny beach.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Reel Moments is $1.99; a small price for the capability.

One thing I’d still like to investigate is how to move the camera as well. I figure I could rig something up with servos. Any suggestions?

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Here’s an example

I’ve been slowly working my way through a huge box of old photos from my grandma’s house, scanning a few each weekend and posting them on a family photo archive. I’m using MailChimp (free up to 2,000 subscribers) to notify subscribed family members and friends when fresh scans go online, and they help fill in the details; places, people, dates and even the backstory. It’s been a wonderful way to honor my grandparents and keep their memory alive.

When I was in elementary school, I lived on a tree-lined street called Middlebrook Ave. in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the scans last weekend was of that very house.

That’s my first bike there on the right. Metallic green with a banana seat, a sissy bar and flared chrome fenders. Sweet.

I have a lot of fond memories of this home. My best friend — Howard Lee — lived in the house next door. Every summer, all the neighbors held a huge block party with grilled hot dogs, burgers, sodas and games. And the neighbors even put up a volleyball net across the street for impromptu games during the summer.

I also remember going to the YMCA on Saturday mornings, taking swimming lessons (hated them) and a whole range of other classes. They had a BB gun shooting range, archery, trampolines, a chemistry class (Kids with bunsen burners? Really?) and my personal favorite, the magic class. Yes, the class was led by a magician and every week he’d teach us a new trick. I parlayed that newfound skill into an obsession, and was performing at birthday parties, school and even the fair. But that’s a story for another day…

Back to the house on Middlebrook, and Google Teleporter –er– Street View. I was wondering if the house was even still there. Just for kicks, I pulled up the house in Google Street View. Here’s what it looks like today:

The bike is gone, but the house looks pretty much the same. Ah, the magic of technology!

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As long as I can remember, this simply designed wooden game sat on the coffee table in my grandparents living room. Growing up, I loved playing the game with my grandpa and grandma. The gameplay was simple. You spun the top, hoping it knocked the eight wooden balls into the eight divots. Each divot had a point value. Once the top stopped, you added up your score. Your opponent took their turn, and you repeated until you were tired of playing or dinner time arrived — whichever came first. Dinner usually won.

This was all long before the age of Mortal Kombat, World of Warcraft and even before the Internet (as we know it today). I didn’t care (not that I knew better). The game was just fun!

My grandparents have both since passed on, and the game now sits on my coffee table, in my living room. And the game still makes me smile. Partly, it’s the memories that it brings me. But a big part is the simple joy of a well-designed game. No batteries required.

Sometimes in life, it’s the simple things that bring us joy.

I shot these photos with my iPhone 4 mounted on a GorillaMobile tripod. To capture the motion of the spinning top, I used the Slow Shutter Cam app. I created the collage with Diptic and stylized it to give it a “70′s” look and uploaded with Instagram. I’m really pleased with the results.

Sometimes in life, it’s the complex things that bring us joy.

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Bethany and Dan in Laguna Beach

I usually reserve the fun stuff for weekends, but this was too hot to wait. If you’ve got an iPhone and like to play around with photos, you’ve got to check out the ToonPAINT app. You can use the camera or open an image from your photo gallery and it converts it to a comic-book styled image. You’ve seen this style before. It first showed up in the Charles Schwab commercials, and then soon after in the film adaptation of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly (appropriately set in Orange County).

ToonPAINT does a damn good job without any manipulation. If you want, you can colorize the images afterwards, but even without doing so, you get some pretty interesting results.

Bethany and Dan, comic book style

Here’s a quick test I ran with a photo of my daughter Bethany and my eldest son Dan, taken a few years ago in Laguna Beach.

Other than cropping the “toon” version a little tighter, I didn’t do any further editing to the generated image. Not bad for a completely automated conversion!

You can get ToonPAINT here. It’s not free, but it’s worth the 2 bucks for the entertainment value if nothing else.

If you give it a try, post a link to your experiments in the comments below.

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Ruth Vanderploeg

Last month, my grandmother passed away at the age of 95. Ruth Vanderploeg was in amazingly good health, living independently in the home she and my grandpa had shared for over three decades, walking regularly, entertaining guests and even teaching English. She suffered a massive stroke, and never regained consciousness. She passed away a few days later. She was a terrific woman, and I will always remember the difference she made in my life.

As our family gathered and began taking care of the house and belongings, we discussed what to do with the boxes of old photos. There were some terrific old photos of family and friends, some of them over 100 years old. A rich tapestry of family history that really belonged to all of us. We split up a few of the obvious ones — I got a lot of pictures from my childhood — and I suggested that for many of the others, we could share them online.

A big box of photos to scan

Why share them online?

First, our family is literally spread all over the world. My mom is in China, my brother in Denver, my kids in Tennessee, New York City and Maine. Aunt Mary lives in New Mexico, Pat lives in Eureka… you get the picture.

Secondly, in many of the photos we couldn’t place the location, date or even some of the people in them. Posting them online allowed the entire family to share their knowledge. “Oh yeah, that’s Uncle Alf!” or “That one’s from 1952!”

Finally, sharing them online would allow everyone a chance to download and print whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. By sharing them on the web, we all have a copy.

How to Create a Photo Archive Online

The author in 1977. Nice afro!

One of the first things I had to do was decide where to share the photos. I considered Flickr and Facebook, but not everyone has (or wants) accounts on those platforms, and it was important that everyone be able to add comments. So I decided to create a photoblog using WordPress (which is free). I’ll be building it on the StudioPress Genesis framework (I already have a developer license) and starting with the Landscape child theme. I’m hosting it on my own server, and I’ll be creating a mailing list using MailChimp (also free up to 1,000 subscribers). And I’ll scan and upload several new images every week, along with an email update to the friends and family that have subscribed.

My plan is to have one photo per post, though I may group photos from a single event on the same post. Each post will be tagged with relevant names, places and dates. This way you could easily retrieve all photos of Grandma Moeller, or from a specific year or place.

The entire project will be hosted at http://photoarchives.jeffhester.net/

Have you created a photoblog? Got any advice or tips to share? Leave a comment and pass them on. And I’ll be sharing updates on my progress as I get further into the project.

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Flump is an Adobe AIR application that lets you download all the public photos from any Flickr user. Written by a couple of Adobe employees — Lee Brimelow and Mike Chambers — Flump makes it easy to backup your photos for archival purposes — useful if Flickr ever looses your stuff.

Personally, I have grown to trust Flickr for all my photos, and often I don’t even bother keeping local copies. This trust in “the cloud” sometimes worries me, especially when I hear the horror stories of people losing their Gmail inbox or worse. Flump fills the gap and makes it easy to create a nice clean backup to my local drive, where I can then burn it to DVD and file it away.

You can get Flump now at Google Code.

Thanks to Amit for the tip.

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 Nicely done!

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Adobe has introduced Photoshop Express, a free, web-based version of Photoshop. Photoshop Express is available now in beta form, and apart from the required Flash 9 plug-in (also free), you don’t need to install any software on your PC. This means Photoshop Express will run happily on your Mac, your Windows PC or even your Linux computer.

On top of that, Adobe is providing 2 GB of storage for your work, also free. So now you can edit images from pretty much anywhere with a PC and an Internet connection.

While graphic designers and image pros will still need the full desktop client, most people will find Photoshop Express more than meets their needs. Even pros will find it useful for those occasions when their own PC is not nearby.

And it’ll probably make law-abiding citizens out of a lot of would-be pirates.

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Have a good weekend! In between family and fun, I’ll be diving into Joomla this weekend.

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Animoto is a terrific service that creates video presentations combining photos and music with some great visual effects and very little effort on your part. The beauty of Animoto is that it works with the photos you probably have already uploaded. Animoto can retrieve your photos from Flickr, facebook, smugmug, Picasa or photobucket. You select the photos you want to use, including any special photos you would like to highlight in the video.

For music, you can upload your own or choose from a very nice selection in a variety of genres. For the video above, I chose one of the Indie Rock selections.

That’s about it! Animoto then creates your video automatically. When it’s done, you’ll have a code you can use to embed it on your own blog, or Animoto will automatically embed your video on facebook, myspace, blogger and several other sites. You can even automatically upload the video to YouTube, or download a Quicktime version to your computer.

All of this is free… as long as you’re happy to limit your videos to 30 seconds in length. Longer videos can be created at a cost of $3 each, or you can pay $30 for an annual subscription that let’s you create an unlimited number of “full-length” videos.

The results speak for themself. I was pleased, given the amount of effort that went into it (almost zero).  Check out Animoto.

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Here’s to the good life!

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