Katherine Hall

Noticin.g and the joys of the iPhone

11 November, 2009 | Kat | Comments: 1

I’ve found a new project and it could be dangerous to my attempts at anything else creative. It’s a game called noticin.gs.

It’s a photo- and internet-based game. The idea is that you take pictures of things that you see that are interesting, unexpected or unusual. Then upload them to Flickr, tag and map them and each day your photos are awarded points according to their content, location and your other entries. Look at noticin.gs for the specifics.

I started playing last Monday, and have uploaded quite a few shots (which you can see on Flickr).

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that I was competitive, but this is the top ten after my first week (Yes, I am Kat 30):

noticings

Ahem. But apart from temporarily satisfying my mile-wide competitive streak, this game has proved useful creatively-speaking.

I’ve discovered the joys of taking photographs with my iPhone. I always used to carry my big Lumix around with me, but it’s heavy and given the size of my (albeit capacious) handbag, I’d have to choose between that and knitting, so the Lumix has been left at home more and more.

But the iPhone has something that I can’t get with the Lumix – it’s more portable and I can do more and more quickly with the photos I take on it. I can alter the colour and add some tilt shift with a couple of nice apps (Mill Colour, Tilt Shift Generator and Camera Bag) and I can upload them in the queue for soup at Pret. You can even get Photoshop for the iPhone now. With the Lumix, I have to wait till I get home for all that excitement. The iPhone camera is pretty poor resolution, and there are no other controls on mine, but I’m going to carry on and use both cameras. It’s the practice that matters.

As for the game, I think I’ll stop trying to beat everyone. Maybe I can cope with not being the top again. The new topic that gets extra points is pictures of things that are mainly red, so I’m just going to look for those. Constraints can be useful too. If you want to give me more constraints for future projects, add something to my list.