Are you addicted to your smartphone?

"I read emails when I’m in the car. If I get up in the middle of the night, I check to see if the red light is flashing, with a mixture of pleasure (someone may have exciting news for me!) and resentment (leave me alone!). When I email someone, I expect an immediate reply, and my impatience grows every minute (“Where are they?”)."

This confession from a smartphone addict is extreme but is it not just another example of a pandemic we are all suffering?

Image - www.instant.ly

I ride the bus every day and most people will take out a smartphone at some point on the journey, some much more frequently than others. Why? Because they want to stay up-to-date with current events, they want to chat to their friends and acquantences, they enjoy being nosy and showing off on social media and also because they're 'bored'. Almost everyone travelling alone, at some point, decides to focus their attention on their phone as they instinctively follow a thought that says "Let's find something new to think about".

The mind's tendency to want to sink its teeth into new information has been around far longer than we've had smartphones of course, but in the times before iPhones and Androids it was much more difficult to exit reality completely. There were always books and newspapers and other distractions to occupy your mind, but it was also much more common to start up a conversation with the stranger next to you or at least to simply look out the window and take in the sites and sounds of wherever you were at that moment.

Image - www.tracygallagher.com

Something I witnessed recently highlights this well. Whilst on the bus, there was a teenage girl on the pavement with her headphones in and her head down, completely captivated by her smartphone. She walked straight off the pavement and into the road without hesitation, with her eyes still glued to the screen. Thankfully, there were no cars on her side of the road but she was still making her way towards us. Our driver started blasting the horn but she was completely absorbed and we skimmed past her with only inches to spare. I'm still not sure whether she even noticed us.

There's nothing wrong with using smartphones, of course, but do we have to become imprisoned by them? When you start using them as an anesthetic to treat 'a bored mind' they have the power to completely take you over. You become a slave to the screen, you no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside , nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you. Smartphone addiction is of course not the real problem, but an over relience to the mind and its incessant thinking. Just remember, when your mind starts to wander, it's not a mistake or failure, its just what minds tend to do. Keep your phone in your pocket and gently return your awareness to the present moment, or get hit by a bus.

Image - www.news.com.au

What do you think?

Are you addicted to your smartphone? Are you addicted to thinking?

Five Quick Tips For Better Instagram Photos

With roughly 130 million monthly users uploading 45 million photos and videos everyday, Instagram remains the most popular dedicated photo sharing platform. If you want to make your pictures stand out among the selfies and cat pics, here are five photography tips to help you create compelling images. These tips are simple to execute, can be done with any smartphone or tablet and will give your photography a more professional look.

1. Shoot during the golden hour

Shooting in the last hour of daylight makes for golden hues and gentle shadows. Photo credit: Amadou Diallo.

Photography enthusiasts have long known that one of the tricks for getting great natural lighting is to shoot during the first or last hour of daylight. Known as the golden hour (or magic hour), these times of day are especially photogenic because the sun is sitting low in the sky, creating a warm golden glow in the scene. A low-lying sun also means you avoid harsh midday shadows that can make for difficult exposures with typical smartphone sensors.

2. Set the scene

You can get great results by composing a scene around a central subject, like this playground fountain, and then simply waiting for something interesting to happen. Photo credit: Amadou Diallo.

Much of the art of photography lies in waiting for moments to happen. But this is not the passive affair that you might think. Most pros spend much more time planning what they’re going to shoot than they do actually taking the pictures. Of course, few of us can devote an entire day to setting up a single shot, but simply finding an interesting scene and then waiting for something to happen inside it can pay big dividends. The next time you see a background or foreground element that catches your eye, take the camera out and wait for something even more interesting to happen within the frame.


3. Get closer

Holding the camera very close to your subject allows you to create a blurred background. Photo credit: Amadou Diallo.

Photographers have long relied on shallow depth of field as a creative tool to draw attention to an in-focus subject by placing background elements out of focus. Unfortunately, your smartphone camera has a relatively wide depth of field, which means that nearly everything in the scene is always in focus. You can achieve at least a slightly blurred background, however, simply by getting very close to your main subject. Most smartphones will allow you to shoot from as close as 3 to 6 inches to your subject, so experiment with getting right up to small objects like flowers, jewellery or food and let all of the objects in the distance blur.


4. Change your perspective

Getting down low for a shot can place emphasis on scene elements that are closer to the ground and make taller elements seem more imposing. Photo credit: Amadou Diallo.

One of the easiest ways to capture more interesting images is to break the habit of always shooting with your smartphone at standing eye-level. Instead, experiment by shooting the same subject from different angles and perspectives. Squat down for a low-level point of view. Or stand on something high to shoot down on your subject from above. Different perspectives can convey distinctly different moods.


5. Shoot in BW

Shooting in BW can make for dramatic and timeless images. Photo credit: Amadou Diallo.

Few things can make a scene more dramatic than shooting it in black and white. Instagram, like most third party photo apps has options to convert a colour image to black and white after the image is captured. And some apps, most notably Hipstamatic, even shoot in BW exclusively. One key thing to keep in mind is that without the presence of colour, brightness and contrast become even more crucial to the composition. Because of this, images that work well in BW often contain strong lines, bold shapes and contain prominent areas of both highlights and shadows in the scene.

These simple tips are well within reach of even novice photographers yet can lead to much more interesting images in your Instagram feed no matter how much experience you have. Have some favourite photo composition tips of your own? Let us know in the comments below.

Article Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2013/08/31/five-quick-tips-for-better-instagram-photos/