Is it just me or is Instagram starting to look like it's 1998? My feed is full of retro-looking, grainy images with light streaks that look like they were taken on old school disposable cameras, date stamp and all. Selena Gomez posted one such photo when she participated in the March for Our Lives over the weekend:
Model Jasmine Sanders has also been on a disposable camera kick on her feed, sharing post after post of photos seemingly taken on film.
Did they really go through the trouble of using an actual disposable camera, developing film at the local CVS, then scanning, then uploading it to Instagram? Of course not. Like everything these days, there's an app for that.
Meet the new KiraKira: Huji Cam. Huji is pronounced hoo-jee, like "Fuji"(get it?). It's free, but there's a catch: You have to take photos in the app using the tiny viewfinder, which mimics the experience of using a real camera. The good news is you can pay $0.99 more to be able to upload photos from your camera roll to get the film effect. It looks like this:
Like an actual disposable camera, the results vary per photo. You do have control over opting in or out of the random light effects. You can also choose to display today's date, or today's date but in 1998.
Why 1998? Who knows. It was a great year: the Spice Girls were on a world tour, Titanic won the Oscar for Best Picture, and "The Boy Is Mine" by Brandy and Monica was at the top of the Billboard charts. I'd say the nostalgia is warranted.
Here are some other examples of Huji in action:
