Help, I'm an Instagram addict

I felt like I was a bit late on the uptake with this one, although it turned out that I was not the last person to have used Instagram, one of my friends had never even heard of it. I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing too. Being really in to my photography and spending a lot of my hard earned time making sure that my pictures look beautiful, I was a little bit miffed that an app had come along that meant that any old person was churning out creative and arty photos at the press of a button.

After a while though intrigue got the better of me and having discovered that the app was free, I thought I'd give it a go. Well, now we have hit a bit of a problem, it would appear that I can no longer take a picture on my iphone without tilt-shifting and filtering to make it look more appealing and professional. This wouldn't be such a bad thing as the quality of iphone pictures is not exactly at its best and it doesn't take much to improve them, but I've now started uploading photos taken with my actual camera, photos that I was really pleased with already and giving them and instagram make over. The thrill and excitement of trying out all the different filters and then waiting for it to be processed is becoming some what addictive. It's just so quick and easy, a few buttons and your image is transformed. How did this happen? How can one little app take over like this? In reality I know it's just a phase, like fruit ninja and the moron test, the novelty will eventually wear off and I'll go back to using my creative brain and spending hours with my beloved canon and photoshop editing packages making everything look perfect. For the time being though I will continue to enjoy the cheats way of creating beautiful photos at the touch of a button and debating over whether Walden or Brannan is the best filer...

Taken with an iphone:

Taken with a camera: