Tag Archives: Instagram

Weekend Escape Upstate

Posted in NYC Living by

 

As promised, here’s an update from the weekend. Harry’s parents have a house in upstate New York, so we went to spend the weekend away from the city, and it could not have come at a better time. I really needed a break post-move, as you probably remember, and this was exactly what I was looking for.

On Saturday morning, we got on the Metro North with friends Laura and Michelle and headed up to spend Saturday planning details of Laura’s wedding. She’s getting married here in June, so needed to hammer out some last minute details so we can really start making final progress on things, and I would say it was definitely a success.

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Of course, no weekend is complete without some serious relaxing, so before Laura and Michelle left in the evening, we spent plenty of time eating barbecue, sitting around, and just generally enjoying being away from the city for a day.

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And, of course, when I woke up Sunday morning, this was the view from the deck outside the bedroom, and pretty much my entire day was made.

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I had a pretty rough week last week in a couple of ways, but this weekend has left me feeling relaxed, refreshed, and very, very happy with life in general. I feel like now I’m ready for summer, ready for fun and friends and lots of time spent together outside.

Once bought, twice purposed

Posted in daily fashion by

Yesterday when I was at work, I was wearing this skinny belt around my waist. A few hours into the day, however, I got tired of it, and since I didn’t need it for my outfit, I decided to take it off. Since I was on the sales floor, I didn’t have time to do anything with it, so instead I just wrapped it around my wrist, like this.

And I kind of fell in love with it.

Instant bracelet, you know? I wore it like this for the rest of the day and got a few compliments on it. I don’t think it’s something I’ll be doing regularly, but it’s handy to know that if I ever need a quasi-industrial-looking bracelet, I can wrap a skinny belt around my wrist a few times and call it a day. I mean, I’ve seen bracelets like this for sale for, uh, a lot of money, and I like this so much more (partly because it was free).I know this isn’t a groundbreaking discovery or anything, but I love the look. And I love that I now have a second purpose for one of my favorite accessories.

It made me wonder, though: do you have anything in your closet that you use for a purpose other than its intended? Or anything at all, really? I love little fun things like this, and I’d love to learn yours, as well!

Be sure to follow me on Instagram @ baileythomas48 to see these before everyone else !

The Battle of the iPhone Camera Apps

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You guys, I have a serious dilemma on my hands. As an iPhonographer, I’m constantly trying to decide on the best app to use for taking and editing pictures. Because I’m currently not rolling in the dough, I can’t afford a really nice camera (nor do I really have any reason to own a really nice camera). I mean, I took a few semesters of photography in high school, but I couldn’t tell you how to properly develop photos if you offered to pay my rent for the rest of the year. And though I know I can be an insufferable know-it-all about a lot of things, photography isn’t one of them – and neither is iPhonography.

So here I am, conducting a survey of the apps I’ve tried and asking your opinions, since I know you have them.

  1. Camera+. This is what I use now, and I’m kind of in love with it. It’s a full-service camera app intended to maximize everything about your camera, and the color and special effects you can use are fantastic (and adjustable, so your photo can be a little enhanced without looking overly doctored). Plus, it allows for cropping, and they just updated the sharing services to be a lot more multi-interface-friendly, which I appreciate.
  2. Instagram. Instagram, wildly popular and known as “the free Hipstamatic”, is an app that I used to use a lot more. Apparently the social networking part of Instagram has picked up a lot of speed in the last six months, somewhere around right when I stopped using it in favor of Camera+. I do like the ease of sharing with your different social networks (especially Tumblr, since you never see anything hooked up to post to Tumblr), but I didn’t think the effects were amahzing.
  3. Hipstamatic. I bought Hipstamatic at the insistence of just about everyone and, to put it lightly, I was very underwhelmed. I found it clunky, hard to operate, and the effects no better than I could find in Instagram or Camera+. From what I can tell, it’s fallen out of favor in comparison with Instagram, but I’m sure a lot of people still use it. Thoughts?
  4. HDR FX. I’ve downloaded HDR FX and messed around with it a little bit, but not enough to really understand it. As far as I can tell, this is more about adjusting landscape views and colors rather than applying a specific “look” to a photo, which makes it a little different, but I’m not sure it’s enough to make it stand out. It looks like it’s more for landscapes and nature photos than narcissistic self-portraits and other things I like to do, so we’ll see how much I really wind up using it.
And don’t even get me started on the photo booth app trend – I’m still lost trying to figure that one out. I’m using ClassicBooth right now, but if you have any suggestions, I’m open!
So this is where I am right now. I’m sure there are more apps out there that I haven’t even heard of. I do love Camera+, but at the same time, I feel like there’s always something I’m missing out on or that I don’t know about. And since I am taking a lot more pictures now, I want to make sure I’m using the best one I can be. What do you use?
Also, I’m totally going to plug myself here and say that I just added a bunch of new things to my Etsy, so please drop by and check them out!