Experience life one photo app at a time

by Zaida Granados

On a recent visit to my parent’s home, I had sudden urge to look through my old shoebox of photographs. You know, “real” photos – with the Kodak logo and codes on the back of the shiny paper, some of which have probably glued themselves against another photo. There’s something magical about sifting through old photographs; they offer an oddly tangible experience of connectedness to the subject and/or place . That experience, however, is very personal and one-dimensional.

With the onset of new photo apps breaking out into the mobile market, photographic experiences are psychologically morphed beyond their one-dimension. I attribute this to the photo apps’ instant capacity to draw engagement from its community. The flux of photo sharing adds an extra dimension to what we see on-screen that as both, photographer and viewer, we experience the photograph simultaneously. I would consider Polaroid to be a primeval example of how photo manufacturers tried to simulate an added dimension to photographs. Fast forward to 2012, and the experiences are endless with the many photo apps to choose from. These include (and definitely not limited to):

Hipstamatic
Instagram
Incredibooth
Grid Lens
Photosynth

Given the growing popularity to instantly share photographic experiences, marketers and advertisers are finding clever ways to integrate these apps with their marketing strategies. An example of this is Ford Europe’s Instagram #Fiestagram campaign, which was integrated with their Facebook page…you may see the Facebook app here. There’s also a remarkable series of photos taken in Afghanistan by photojournalists who used Hipstamatic to digitally record the lives of U.S. Marines in war zones…a gallery of these images may be viewed here.

The strategies vary, but the tools and the experiences are the same. We are connecting via images, and this additional dimension makes life that much more magical – not to disregard the paper photographs of the heydays. And not that there’s anything wrong with the one-dimensional experience (there is no hiding the fact that we all have photographs from our adolescent years that we would want no one to experience), but to keep these photographs hidden in our old shoeboxes is like keeping life’s experiences hidden in it, as well.

Life is to experience it with others, whether for personal or marketing purposes. Wouldn’t you agree?