A Photo a Day with the Retro App
weblogpomo
One of the things I am working through this year is Project 366,
which is essentially a photo a day. I started the year off strong with
perfectly framed, edited and intentional photos… but then there are
those days when life kind of gets in the way. Or the lack of it. I mean
those days where you just lay on the couch and do nothing, but you know
you still have to take a photo, so you take a picture of your TV, or
your sleeping dog, the light in your living room, or just literally
anything so you don’t fail. I’m still going strong at day 128 and it’s
mostly thanks to the Retro
App.
I wanted to stay accountable, but I also didn’t want to publicly post my daily photos for the entire world to see, just in case I did have those less than admirable (or maybe just more personal) photos. And so, enter Retro.
Retro is a “photo journal where you share for yourself as much as your friends.” It’s organized by weeks, and when you upload a photo it shows what day of the week you took the photo. You can post 1 or many, a photo or a video (I only use it for photos, and mostly just 1 a day, unless using the collaborative feature). It’s private by default, and you’d have to manually add/approve friends. You can give out “keys” to closer friends so they can see all of the photos in your gallery, and if they don’t have a key, they only see the last 4-weeks by default… and everything else is a (literal) blur.
My ultimate hands-down favorite part of this app is that you can order postcards of your photos. You can select 1 photo, or as many photos as you’d like and it’ll arrange it in a grid. Since I am doing a photo a day, I order a postcard showcasing all my photos taken for that month. In the message, I just write down the month for me to remember. You can send it to yourself, or your friends. At the time of writing this, postcards are free, although there’s a placeholder that it may be $2 per postcard (which is still not bad at all) in the future. This is a huge motivator for me because I want to make sure that my postcard has a complete month when I order it, no matter how mundane a day is.
They recently just came out with a new feature for albums to share with friends. There you can create “collaborative journals” based on events, a subject, etc. that you can keep all to yourself or share a link with your friends, even if they don’t have the Retro app. It’s a great way for your friends to contribute to the album. It’s very reminiscent of when I used Photocircle heavily with my friends.
If you’re at all interested, check out their ethos, and why they started the app. It’s a little different than other social media photo apps, and I guess that’s why I like it.
Side Note(s):
- This post is Day 7 of the WeblogPoMo2024 challenge.
- I don't typically do App reviews so consider this my first official one. Wait, is this considered an app review?
- This is my 5th time doing Project 365/6
- This app is the brainchild of two former Instagram employees.
- Here’s a recent article TechCrunch wrote about it, and a not so recent one.
