So I take these occasional images on the subways and even the bus, usually on the way home from work.  For some reason I don’t seem to do it in the morning.  Lately I’ve been taking them with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone, which is one of many “toy camera” type apps for that device, but it is by far the smartest and coolest one.   The designers were brilliant – you can switch among several varieties of artificial film, lenses and flash to create different effects.  You get a handful with the app, but they keep offering to sell you more, with each one cooler than the next.  You end up paying, I don’t know $10-20 to get the whole set, which you never would have paid in a single pop, but it is totally worth it.

I usually use the randomize function, in which you shake the phone to have the program choose each of the 3 elements at random, and it doesn’t tell you what they are until it processes the resulting image.   This one happens to be a combination of the Helga Viking lens, the BlackKeys B+W film, and a Berry Pop flash, whose effect was probably wasted on the black and white “film”.

I like the random application of these effects to this subject.  This gentleman looks like he could fit in just about any era from the last 50 or so years, so he fits the old film look well.  His clothes, hair and bag could be from almost any decade, except maybe the 70s, and he is carrying no give-away items like a Kindle or cell phone.  He’s not even wearing the revealing earbuds that go with any music player.

Finally, I’m using the “Subway Candids” tag for this, because I don’t feel like creating a separate tag for people riding the bus.  I’m not sure how to fit these into my posting schedule.  For now, I think I’ll add them occasionally as bonus posts in excess of my usual daily image.