Easy-to-make photo videos with Flipagram

Seeing as half the world and their spouses appear to be producing some variation on 2013 In Review articles, videos, and compilations, I thought I'd go for a variation on the variation of 2013 In Review. I've made a sneak peek Flipagram of some of the photos that will be appearing in my Social Photography book, which is due to be released in spring 2014. It's a prospective retrospective, I suppose.

As for Flipagram, it's a rather nifty app that I discovered when a photographer whom I follow on Instagram compiled her best bits of 2013 into a slick looking video. (Thanks, Natalie Norton!) It allows you to hook up to Instagram to make a digital flipbook of your favourite photos, or if you're not of the Instagram persuasion, to do it from your smartphone's camera roll.

Photo 30-12-2013 14 06 01

Once you've selected your images you can arrange them in your preferred order, crop them to fit Flipagram's square format, duplicate them for added impact, decide between a 15 second or 30 second video playtime, and choose a soundtrack if you fancy. After that, you hit the button and Flipagram compiles your video for you. Then you can share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube, or you can email it away. There's no option to embed your videos from the Flipagram site, but if you upload them to YouTube, you can embed from there.

I was impressed by how easy it was to compile a little video and finish it the way that I wanted it finished. At the moment you can't return to edit a saved video, but Flipagram has developments in the pipeline, so that might be one of them. And useful it would be, too.

Flipagram is free, nothing to do with Flipboard, available for Android and iOS, and worth a download for a bit of fun.