See You in the Morning
The iPhone has rendered many things obsolete — GPS units, alarm clocks, and arguably even cameras have become tools of the past ever since they were replaced by apps on your phone. However, there are many experiences that an app simply cannot replicate. It’s impossible to compare a photo that you view on your camera roll versus a printed photo from a physical camera. YouTuber David Dobrik, famous for his love of the disposable camera, hopes to bridge the gap with his new app, Dispo. Dispo is a virtual disposable camera that creates photos that look like you just picked them up from CVS. Take a moment to think back to your childhood. For most, disposable cameras are associated with fun. When I think of the times I used a disposable camera, I immediately conjure memories of birthday parties, field trips, and vacations. Unlike with your cell phone, which captures everything in HD, there was a certain nostalgic charm to the quality of a disposable. Sure, the features of a disposable camera were nonexistent, but in a way this was better. You could only take pictures of what was right in front of you, and hope they wouldn’t be overexposed. No one cared about their grid. People just took pictures of things because they liked what they saw and wanted to immortalize the moment. Knowing you had a limited number of pictures just added to the fun, because you really had to plan out what you shot. It’s astounding to think how quickly we as a culture have shifted our aesthetic preferences due simply to the growth of an app, but here we are. I say that because I will often find myself taking a photo in portrait, rather than landscape, because posting horizontal images on your story doesn’t quite hit as hard as posting vertical ones. And that right there is the problem. Wanting to capture and share something with the world is fine. But to curate your visual aesthetic based upon a perceived expectation of “what looks good on my feed” is the antithesis of the artistic component of photography. That’s why Dispo is a breath of fresh air in a world that has been polluted by Instagram.
see what has been taken from us and weep!
want credit? dial 1-800-eat-shit
In my opinion, the best part of Dispo is the interface: a complete replication of a disposable camera, and like a real disposable camera takes until 9 AM the next day for pictures taken with it to be “developed.” When you first open the app, you have to push over a bag, which will reveal your virtual Dispo camera. Now, unlike a real disposable camera, there’s no limit to how many pictures you can take, and unlike most social platforms, there’s no “feed” aside from the rolls that you follow, or are invited to. Rolls can be private or public. With private rolls, you send invites to users to be a part and contribute to them and only people who follow the roll can see the contents of it. With public rolls, anyone can join and see the contents. Since the app is still new, and people are still figuring out the idiosyncrasies of the app, it feels really fresh and new. Not surprisingly, the most popular format of Dispo post is the mirror fit pic. Each time I take a new picture, I’m pleasantly reminded each morning to see the outcome of the photos I took. Nothing beats the suspense of butt-dispoing — which has already happened to me more than three times. No, unfortunately, I didn’t capture anything cool accidentally. Now I have heard some criticism that Muji creates an almost identical image to Dispo, to which I disagree. Muji photos feel like you took a picture of a Sepia filtered Polaroid, whereas Dispo pictures look like what you’d find going through your 2003 photo album. The head designer of Dispo, former Adobe Lightroom superstar Briana Hokanson (@boop) and the rest of the team have worked hard to ensure the photos you take accurately emulate capturing a photo with a physical disposable camera.
witness what the lord hath granted us in His wisdom!
Unlike Instagram, where each day feels more and more like a dying strip mall, Dispo feels like it’s all about the capturing the moment. In a short amount of time, the app has experienced massive growth. Dispo went from a gimmicky photography app, to a social media platform, similar and in many ways superior to, VSCO. Increasingly, we yearn for a return to the analog, from handwriting notes to posting screenshots of the Photo Booth on our MacBooks, Dispo gives us a gentle nudge.
