This year, we got the first white Christmas DFW has had since Texas was a state. Okay, not that long — more like 80 years or so, but we spin ‘em pretty big here in the Lone Star State. It may not be that big a deal to many of you who are used to real winters, but here in DFW, we were wearing shorts and flip-flops just a couple of days ago. That isn’t spin.
However you are spending your day today, whether it’s in snow, on a beach, in a city or out in the country, I wish you the merriest of Christmases this year and I hope your day and your season is filled with family and friends, happiness and love.
If your iPhone is not one of the sexy new 3GS models, one of the features you are probably missing in your camera is the ability to record video. For along time, there have been options such as Cycorder available for jailbroken iPhones, but this is not an option for the majority of iPhone owners.
We are starting to see some new apps which bring limited video capabilities to older iPhones. Glyn Evans reviews one of the new ones, ShowTime – Video Recorder by Polar Bear Farm. You may want to pass on this app for now.
The virtual image image of the iPhone gets exhibited in the real space and walls of the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Blvd., Berkeley, CA. www.giorgigallery.com
200 images will be printed and displayed in the gallery for the month of February 2010, and will be sold as individual works of art. A book will be published that will include all of the images along with names and a short bio of each iPhoneographer.
PhoneGrafer by emotionale is now available for free for the holidays through December 28, 2009.
PhoneGrafer is a camera app with a built-in self-timer, image leveling and an assortment of filters. You can upload straight to Flickr from within the app and the app saves some EXIF data with your photos.
The filter set is appealing. The Russian filter duplicates the look of a plastic toy camera, a Holga. I also like that you can add a color cast in the CMYK color space. The app supports iPhone 3GS file sizes and saves in full resolution.
My girlfriend and I have a very pleasant Sunday morning coffee ritual. Some days, it involves simply lounging around the bed, reading and sharing news stories from our iPhones. Most of the time, weather permitting, we go out to one of the many Starbucks in our city. My beverage of choice is the Grande Latte with an extra shot. The baristas call it a “triple,” I prefer to call it by its long name, hoping to avoid any confusion.
On this Sunday, we went to a Starbucks that we usually don’t go to. It was near the Apple Store, so we thought we’d multitask. The day started cool and cloudy and went cold and gray from there. The newly placed holiday wreaths swung about in the wind. The sky became more progressively gray, sucking the color out of just about everything. For a moment, it felt like winter in North Texas.
It could have been anywhere, really. It just happened to be a few miles before tomorrow. The presentation of this flour-free chocolate cake was as delicious as the dessert itself.
"Just Dessert"
Toolbox: Camera Genius, Perfectly Clear, TiltShift Generator
Trade shows are always fun and often insiteful. If you’re near Southern California or can travel, this promises to be an excellent trade show. I’m planning on attending as a guest and am looking forward to meeting in person and interacting with Glyn from iPhoneography.com and the developers whose apps I use on a daily basis. If you’re there, I look forward to meeting you and swapping stories!
=M=
JACKSON, Mich. – PMA – The Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations announces the PMA Photo App Pavilion at the upcoming PMA 2010 International Convention and Trade Show, February 21-23, 2010, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California.
Hosted by Glyn Evans, editor of the popular blog iPhoneography (www.iphoneography.com), the pavilion will showcase developers of the best and most relevant photo applications for mobile devices. There will be presentations at the top of every hour and plenty of time for attendees to interact with and ask questions of the developers.
Participants will include iPhone photographer Sion Fullana, who will talk each day about how he uses his mobile phone and applications to supplement his professional photography career. Brad Malcolm of Athentech will be presenting the Perfectly Clear application, which is a simple image-enhancing software using algorithms that only correct the areas of the photo needing correction. For instance, if the photo is lit well, Perfectly Clear will not enhance it much at all. When there are problems, however, it works magic.
For PMA 2010 registration information, contact the PMA Convention/Registration Department at 800-248-8804 in the United States and Canada or 517-788-8100. Attendees can also visit the convention website.
———-
Glyn Evans runs iPhoneography.com and has given me permission to post this article here on LifeInLoFi.com.
Darkroom Premium (formerly Steadycam Premium) by Stepcase is now free for the holidays for a limited time!
Darkroom Premium is a camera replacement app that features tools to help you take better pictures, such as grid guides, anti-shake, and Big Button full-screen shutter release. The app also has built-in image sharing hooks with Darkroom’s online photo album. App Store ratings for the current version are evenly split, but those who wrote reviews generally give this app good marks.
The app normally sells for $0.99 USD in the App Store, so grab it quickly for free before this special is over.
True lo-fi photography is not an exact art. Primarily because of the nature of the equipment (mainly mass-produced plastic or “toy” cameras), unpredictability is an essential element. Most lo-fi cameras have cheap, plastic lenses; many of them have imprecise cases that don’t completely seal, causing light leaks, vignetting, lens distortions and other imperfections. To the lo-fi photographer, these imperfections are desirable and add to the look of the image. It’s the quest for the happy accident.
There are apps that duplicate the images taken by classic lo-fi cameras such as the Holga and the Lomo — classic cameras widely produced and still easily found. Hipstamatic by Synthetic Corp is the first app to replicate the look of one of the rarest lo-fi cameras, the Hipstamatic 100, a square-frame 35mm camera most of us probably never heard of until now. I think the images this app creates are gorgeous and even though there are flaws in this first release, I love this app!
Sunday, December 20, 2009 — the first day in a long time that I’ve been free to get out and photograph. It was a beautiful weekend here — sunny, crisp — and ironically I think I found my best images indoors this weekend.
This year, we got the first white Christmas DFW has had since Texas was a state. Okay, not that long — more like 80 years or so, but we spin ‘em pretty big here in the Lone Star State. It may not be that big a deal to many of you who are used to real winters, but here in DFW, we were wearing shorts and flip-flops just a couple of days ago. That isn’t spin.
The virtual image image of the iPhone gets exhibited in the real space and walls of the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Blvd., Berkeley, CA. 
Hosted by Glyn Evans, editor of the popular blog iPhoneography (
