With the iPhone making serious inroads into photojournalism, a number of photojournalism have been using Hipstamatic to document their stories here in the US, but also from various other parts of the world. A number of these stories have appeared on the cover of The New York Times and this has caused intense and acrimonious debates regarding the usage of the Hipstamatic application as it does render the image more artistically then as a straight forward photo.
Synthetic, makers of Hipstamatic created their app to blend the line between analogue and digital, bringing back how we felt about photography, the spirit of imperfection that it offered before becoming digital and its aim for perfection. Some time after the initial release of Hipstamatic, Synthetic developed the GoodPak with the idea that the proceeds would go to charitable organisations, such as the Dali Museum GoodPak to aid the Dali Museum in St Petersburg or We Heart Boobies GoodPak to raise funds for National Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Photo from benlowy.com, all rights reserved by Lowy
So when New York based, award winning photojournalist Benjamin Lowy, who has covered Afghanistan using an iPhone with the Hipstamatic app, contacted Synthetic and spoke with CEO, Lucas Allen Buick with an idea of developing a digital pack. Buick felt this was a great opportunity to give back to the photojournalism community and so created the Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism to be launched with the release of a new GoodPak.
With Lowy closely over-seeing the design of the Photojournalism GoodPak, it is important to him that it is done right and in the end the app helps remove the negativities associated with Hipstamatic by purists in the photojournalism world who believe that using Hipstamatic is not ethical and that it is not representative of actual events.
The Photojournalism GoodPak lens and film cartridge will bear Lowy’s name, the lens will generate a bluish-green tone, while omitting Hipstamatic vignetting, spotting or other ‘weird’ appearance.
Funds raised from the release of Photojournalism GoodPak will be applied to Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism in order to educate and support the next generation of photo storytellers. Details as to how these grants would be funded is still be worked out, including the submission requirements.
Currently it is estimated that the Photojournalism GoodPak to be released after the autumn of 2012.
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