Instagram for Android // BLOCKPARTY

Well folks, it’s here. The coveted instagram for android is here and I couldn’t be happier to connect with my friends and share photos of my every day life. I read yesterday some pretty nasty things some iPhone users have been saying about the change, and laughed so hard, like”Instagram went from a gated community to section 8 housing in one day #boycottandroid” Well, this here gated community is pretty dang nice, let me set up my cooler on the front porch, my trampoline in the driveway, park the el camino in the lawn and let’s have ourselves a block party. Here are a few tips to make you look just as cool as iPhone users and have a blast doing it. (Please excuse my constantly dusty phone, working in a wood shop all day isn’t kind to my Droid Incredible 2)

+ PHOTO COLLAGE APPS +
Before you start feeling like a novice, here a few apps you can use in conjunction with instagram to create the looks you’ve seen iPhone users doing. The first, super rad effect is putting 2 or more photos together to create a photo collage. The two best apps I’ve played around with are photoshake and photogrid. Both are really super easy to use and have some fun effects to mess around with. I took a little photo of our alligator snapping turtle last night using photoshake.
There are a lot of really neat effects you can use right in the instagram app, and you don’t have to couple it with another app. The photo of Ollie is with the Nashville filter through instagram.
+ CAMERA FILTER APPS +
I took these two photos with FXCamera but the resolution is too low to use with instagram, so this is more of a fun app but doesn’t work great with instagram. Also the polaroid only points to the side, so you have to manually flip it in a photo editing program if you take vertical photos. Kind of annoying, but still fun.
And another really rad app you can use with pretty filters and effects is Magic Hour. It’s super easy to use and works perfectly with instagram.
I hope this helped. I don’t care what kind of phone you have, as long as you love it and use it to its fullest. I’m sure I’ll come across a million more tricks and tips while using instagram, and will do an update at some point. Also, just an fyi, you can use all of these apps to upload photos to twitter, flickr or facebook, too. I am enjoying instagram so far and am pretty stoked for another way to share photos and use the technology at hand! My name on instagram is becalewis. Let’s be friends.
xo,
Beca