We’ve spent the past few years figuring out how to make content creation as habitual as content consumption. That’s the idea behind Days, the daily visual diary we launched in May 2013. Nine months later, we’re excited to announce that we’ve accepted an offer to bring our work on daily habits to Yahoo. We started our company with the vision of transforming daily habits, and we’re proud to be joining a new one that shares that mission.
Our entire team will be joining Yahoo’s NYC-based Mobile and Emerging Products group, where we’ll continue on as a startup team within a larger organization. The Days app will live on as a standalone entity, and we’ll also be working on some exciting new projects that we can’t talk about just yet.
Sincerest appreciation to our investors, our advisors, our friends and families, the good folks at Apple, and, most importantly, our users! Your days have inspired us and it’s been beyond rewarding watching the product and community we’ve built together evolve and grow. We are so grateful, thank you!
If you have any questions, please tweet @wander or email us via founders@onwander.com.
With a few holidays behind us and a few ahead, here are 3 tips on capturing festive photos during this holiday season:
1) Set the scene and document the holiday’s flair otherwise known as “the details”. Someone has spent a really long time setting that table or creating that ornament so snap a picture before it gets filled with people and ruined
2) The gratuitous amounts of food need to be pictured. From your plate that’s never been so full, to the one that is inexplicably clean. What are you eating for the holidays?
3) Holidays are all about the traditions and the people that make them. From family football, to extensive trivia games…the first one to fall asleep, to the last…. capture the moments that make your holidays your very own.
Having close family, friends and gratitude all in one place should not be taken for granted. Don’t be shy, take lots of photos so your memories can keep you warm for years to come.
It’s getting better all the time! We just launched an entirely new version of our Days permalink pages. Each day now plays as a beautiful slideshow. It’s the best way to share the story of your day.
It gets even better. You can now embed you day on your blog. We had a significant day…
Days Tutorial Series Episode 5
Taking Great Food Photos w/ Your Phone
Make your breakfast lunch and dinner look like it’s straight out of a magazine. Here are 3 tips on taking great food photos:
1. Lighting: Be mindful of lighting. Try to use indirect, natural light if you’re shooting in the day time. Sit near a window if you can. Shooting in a dark restaurant or artificial light won’t produce a beautiful photo. If it’s a dark dinner, get creative and try putting a drink in front of a candle.
2. Angles: You either want your phone to be directly above the dish and kept flat or you want to keep your phone at a 45 degree angle over the food. Experiment with angles. A sandwich may not be so interesting from above, but delectable from the side.
3. Composition: Create some context. Pretend you’re a food stylist. Compose items or plates on the table in an interesting way. Center round plates in your photo, incorporate other items on the table to reflect the scene, or turn indian takeout into a masterpiece.
Ok, now you’re probably hungry. Go take some great food photos and enjoy your DAYS!
9:53am — Cakes at Flour Shop come in all shapes, sizes and color and they’re always made day-of. Nothing but the freshest here — Flour Shop Kitchen
10:07am — Sketching out a cake. Exclusively committed to crayons. “I hate the way pencils sound” — Flour Shop Kitchen
11:25am — This Wu-tang collection is no joke. Flour Shop will be working with the clan on their new gallery project as a fan, artist and collaborator — Flour Shop Kitchen
11:41am — Cakes out of the oven. Time to build cake, cake, cake, cake — Flour Shop Kitchen
12:18pm — Butter creamy and dreamy. Learned it all from her momma — Flour Shop Kitchen
1:35pm — Shooting cakes at Vogue for their holiday gift guide — Vogue Magazine
2:11pm — Behind the scenes of the Vogue team styling the shoot. Trying to get the money shot — Vogue Magazine
2:41pm — Don’t know what looks better, the cake from the outside or the inside?! Important to note: Anna Wintour saw and smelled this plate as it was walked down the halls of Vogue. Moment wasn’t captured out of sheer fear — Vogue Magazine
2:49pm — Kickin it “Vogue-school” — Vogue Magazine
3:06pm — @amirahkassem is a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world — Toys”R”Us
3:10pm — Picked up a dollhouse for a Flourshop.com photo shoot tomorrow. Don’t be fooled, that dollhouse weighs 20 lbs. — Times Square
3:33pm — Pulling looks from Stella McCartney’s showroom for the shoot tomorrow. New Flour Shop website to launch soon — Stella McCartney Offices
4:20pm — Pizza for lunch: caramelized cauliflower. Fear no carbs — Co.
5:01pm — Stocking up on supplies — NY Cake & Baking
5:24pm — Hustilin through Party City for more — Party City
6:36pm — This is the house that cake built — Flour Shop Kitchen
7:03pm — Trying on the looks for tomorrow and testing their ability to keep up with these moves — Flour Shop Kitchen
8:52pm — Getting nails did. Pink metallic — Polished Nail Salon
9:01pm — Early to bed tonight. Despite all the colors, toys and sweets. This day is no cake walk. And in the words of Wu-tang: “C.R.E.A.M- Cake Rules Everything Around Me” — Williamsburg
Days in the Life documents the lives of your favorite folks, a day at a time. Made with Days, the first visual diary that lets you capture your life as it really is. Get the app →
$17MM, a Williamsburg penthouse and a couple of rappers. It’s not a music video shoot, it’s a day in the life of Mahbod Moghadam, the provocative co-founder of Rap Genius. Photos by Lara Speier
1:04pm — Meet Mahbod (@maboo): Yale BA, Stanford JD, Rap Genius co-founder. “I’m a true master, you can check my credentials” — RapGenius
1:49pm — RG is big enough that they’ve got famous folks dialing in to help annotate lyrics. Here’s the baller formerly known as Ron Artest annotating Big Pun’s “It’s So Hard” — RapGenius
3:36pm — It’s especially dope when artists drop by to annotate their own songs. This is NessaSary. Watch out for her — RapGenius
3:42pm — Obligatory pose with the Rap Genius sign and the Manhattan skyline. Did we mention the RG office is incredible? — RapGenius
Days in the Life documents the lives of your favorite folks, a day at a time. Made with Days, the first visual diary that lets you capture your life as it really is. Get the app →
Days Tutorial Series Episode 4
Photos of your Kids with Dave Nelson from Secret Penguin
Dave is one of our favorite Days users (@davenelson), particularly because he’s able to capture some of the most beautiful and interesting shots of his family. He (and his daughter) gives us 3 tips to taking great photos of your kids using the Days app:
1. Be present :If you’re staring at your phone all day, you’ll miss the tiny moments …like, when they first see ice cream, or are about to go down a slide, or they smell a dog fart.
2. Show the full story : Add context to your photos by not always focusing directly on your kid. For example: focus on your food, and capture the moment of seeing your kid in the background about to dig in!
3. Play with your kid :Discover new things alongside them, go on adventures, take them to the skatepark, give them experiences they’ll want to remember - even if it’s as simple as making a fort out of a box!
Make those moments happen that you’ll both want to look back on.
Enjoy your Days!!
Days Tutorial Series Episode 3
Taking Great Party Photos
Days Tutorial Series Episode 3: Tips for the best party photos with Nicky Digital from NickyDigital.com
1) Get in as close as you can to the action and take photos of what makes the party special
2) Try taking photos both with and without flash, sometimes you’ll be surprised about which photos give you the best results
3) Be part of the party! Take lots of selfies of you and your friends having a good time
Enjoy your weekend, TGIF and we can’t wait to see your party photos on Days!
Follow Nicky Digital on Days too! | @nickydigital
Days Feature Release
Camera Roll Import
We’re very excited to announce a new update that’s available in the app store today that has a feature many of you have been waiting for (drum roll please)…. Camera roll import!
Activate import once and we’ll start scanning. We’ll look for photos from days you haven’t already posted (as far back as a year ago!) and continue to pull in new photos going forward! In other words, take a photo on your camera roll, open Days, and watch it magically appear in your day picker.
To turn on camera roll auto-import simply hit the white “turn on auto-import” button in your drafts or day-picker section of the app and watch your photos load in.
OR you can turn camera roll auto-import on and off from the “camera settings” section of the app by toggling the “Auto import photos from Camera Roll” button and hitting “save”.
Days Tutorial Series Episode 2.0 (make sure your phone’s audio is ON):
How to take a great selfie
Lara, a selfie pro, gives you 3 tips on how to take a great selfie with the Days App:
1. Get the right angle, get the right look, and get your arm out of the shot! It’s totally avoidable
2. Pick an expression — a selfie is like a visual status update, so use the GIF feature and subtle facial movements to convey how you’re feeling
3. Get your friends involved!! The photo booth is in your hands, there’s fun for you and a friend to be had
So open that front-facing camera and put a selfie in your day!
We’re starting a documentary-style project to present you with a day-in-the-life of a “creative visionary” as it really is: un-produced and as authentic as possible. Maybe you’ve seen the first few in your stream. It’s called Days in the Life.
It’s the “stars, they’re just like us…” of the internet. We’re starting with NYC-based folks and we can’t wait to bring them to you. Have someone you’d love to see featured? Drop us a line and we’ll do our best.
Days Tutorial Series Episode 1.0:
How to Make a Great GIF
Lara teaches you 3 rules for making great GIFs:
Try to hold the camera in the exact same position for each photo in your GIF
Don’t get trigger happy, try to capture discrete poses
Keep your GIF at 2 or 3 frames
And remember, each photo has to be taken within 10 seconds of the one before it.
Have fun, GIF safely, enjoy your Days!
Days posts now look 17000x better on Tumblr. So check that out (here) or JUST TRY IT
Saturday, July 13, 2013
11:36am – View from the roof of our hostel – Arequipa
