Worldwide InstaMeet: Photowalk Honolulu

One of my all-time favorite iPhone apps is Instagram.  You use the app to take pictures, put a filter on the photo and upload it to the Instagram social network.  Right now, it's only for iOS but an Android app is coming.

This past Saturday, I took part in my first Instagram Meetup for the Worldwide InstaMeet: Photowalk in Honolulu, Hawaii.

It took place at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park.  What did we do?  Talk story and take pictures!

Instagram photos are like vintage pictures.  The filters are supposed to make your photos have that "old" look.  That's also why the pictures are more square to get that Poloroid look.

Although I do love the filters in Instagram and they keep adding filters, I have other filter apps like picfx.  For this picture of the group of birds, I used a couple of filters from picfx.

I don't have favorite filters.  I choose filters depending on what I want to highlight in a picture.  For this picture I chose a black and white filter from picfx.  The contrast between the black and white helped to bring out the shape of each bird.  In the original color picture, the birds seemed to blend into the background.

This is the first time I saw the Ehime Maru Memorial in person.  I used the Instagram Toaster filter to bring out the color in the photo.  I also tried to get a little bit of the Pacific Ocean in the shot, which is the final resting place for the Ehime Maru crew. Instagram also has a tilt-shift feature that allows you to blur part of the photo.  I tried to blur the background to make it appear even farther than it is.  It is also a nice effect.

For this picture I used another recent favorite app of mine called Tiny Planet Photos.  There is a slight learning curve to knowing how to take a picture and using the app to get the result you want.  But I love the results!

We also got to go by the ocean and take pictures there.  We were hoping and praying that no one would drop their iPhone in the rock crevasses or, even worse, the ocean!  This is probably my favorite photo of the photowalk.  I used the Instagram Gotham filter to bring out the ocean spray.

After the photowalk, we went to Kaka'ako Kool for some shave ice.  For those who have never been to Hawaii, shave ice is like a snow cone.  I took a shot of our group ordering shave ice.  I used a picfx filter called Nebula to make it look it was in outer space.  The color of the Nebula also changed the color of certain lights.

Here's my rainbow-flavored shave ice.  I got a neat in-camera effect where I focused on the shave ice and blurred the straw.

Next door to Kaka'ako Kool is Fresh Cafe.  While waiting at the bathroom, I snapped this picture of a cork artpiece. Unfortunately, I may have moved my hand and slightly blurred the photo.  So, I just made the background even MORE blurry!  Win!

Behind Fresh Cafe, there was a rummage sale going on and that's where I snapped this photo.  I used a couple of picfx filters for this.

I hope you can take part in an Instagram Meetup wherever you are in the world.  Here's a link for Instagram Meetups in your neck of the woods.