Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

PhotoTropedelic

PhotoTropedelic
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: A  good app for a groovy wayback effect

Yes, I invoked Austin Powers in my Bottom Line recommendation. Honestly, when I heard about this app from a friend of mine, my first thought was “Cool! A Peter Max app!” Either way, PhotoTropedelic by Larry Weinberg is a fun app which produces effects unlike anything else currently in the App Store.

One of the things that I like about this app is that it can also produce artwork that’s vector-based PDF (although getting there is a little kludgy), allowing you to output to any size, or to rasterize in Photoshop to convert to any resolution.

Glyn Evans from iPhoneography.com put the app through its paces. An update has already been submitted to Apple fixing the watermark issue mentioned in his review. The app goes for $1.99 USD.

Click here to read Glyn’s review on iPhoneography.com >>>

App Store link: PhotoTropedelic

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Glyn Evans is the publisher of iPhoneography.com and has given me permission to post a link to his review here on Life In Lo-Fi.

Like many of you, I follow a lot of photographers on Twitter — iPhoneographers and non. I click the links that interest me and I feel lucky when I stumble upon a cool link that’s motivational in some way.

30 Photographic Goals for 2010 by Christina N. Dickson is another good read. While it’s aimed primarily at those who want to pursue photography as a business, there are a lot of items in this article that are relevant to those who photograph purely for art’s sake or even just for fun. It’s a good list of goals for improving your images, increasing your exposure, and building your reputation as a photographer whether your equipment of choice is an iPhone or not. Even if we already know most of these (right?), it’s good to get an occasional reminder.

My favorites are #8 – Compete, #12 – Create a photo book a month, and of course, #1 – Don’t leave your camera. Isn’t that one of the reasons we love our iPhones?

Click here for the entire article over at poor man’s hobbies blog >>>

Post your favorites or suggest other photographic goals in the comments below!

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(Thanks to Terrill Welch (Twitter: @terrillwelch) for helping me to find this one)

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Editor’s Note: 2010 is starting off as a great year for exhibitions of iPhone photography. Another interesting showing is the 1 is enough Exhibition, presented by iPhography.com, Taky Magazine and the 1k x 1k Gallery.

The selected images will be shown in print and galleries in several countries spanning the globe. The exhibit will also be featured in the French culture magazine Taky. There’s great exposure for the artist and this exhibition certainly has a lot of reach and clout to expand the audience of the photography shot with iPhones.

Read the rest of this entry →

The iPhone’s camera has a 0.2 second fixed shutter speed and a fixed aperture of f/2.8. It adjusts for exposure by adjusting the sensitivity of the sensor inside the camera — in effect, adjusting the ISO. This means that the darker your photograph, the greater the chance there will be noise in the image.

You can improve the color and clarity, as well as reduce the noise in your iPhone images by making sure, whenever possible, that you have a strong light source that’s behind you. For example, when taking outdoor photographs, try shooting with the sun at your back whenever you can. Lighting your subject properly will help you get good color, good contrast and reduced noise from your iPhone photos.

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Cinemark IMAX Theater
Dallas, Texas
January 14, 2010

The Planets

Toolbox: Perfectly Clear, CameraKit

The lobby of the Cinemark IMAX Theatre in Dallas is breathtaking. The tall ceilings house a steampunk-like installation piece of the planets. The theme, I suppose, is “the world of the movies” but once I get past the theatrically lit orbs and the odes to classic films, I always think of the brilliant musical classic by Gustav Holst whenever I’m waiting to see a film on the multi-story screen.

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Camera One
Version 1.6

Bottom line: Improved. A decent camera replacement for snapshots.

Camera One

Back in October, we reviewed version 1.0 of CocoaTek’s Camera One, a full-featured camera replacement app. Since then, the app has been updated several times, the most recent is version 1.6. It’s currently in the Top 5 paid Photography apps in the U.S. App Store and for this new update, I have spotted a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews from many users who’ve written no other reviews. These look like shill reviews to me — a widespread practice in the App Store to boost app rankings and therefore sales.

I thought I’d revisit Camera One to see how it had improved since our first review and if it was worthy of the praise, either real or fabricated, that was being written about it.

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Fort Worth, Texas
January 9, 2010

Meadowbrook Drive-In

Toolbox: ProCamera, TiltShift Generator

There’s a giant, dirty, old screen just west of downtown Fort Worth. There used to be two more screens nearby. Weeds and bushes had reclaimed the parking areas. The trees had overgrown the screens. The once-white screens were dingy and filled with rust stains. None of the screens were even worth tearing down.

Hidden in the trees and the brush off Riverside Drive, the Meadowbrook Drive-In marquee still stands. The lights long dimmed and broken out. Even the last pain has peeled off, revealing the original theater sign underneath. An old bicycle has been rigged to the top. The drive-in behind is now a parking lot for trash dumpsters.

No parking. No trespassing. No movies. The one remaining screen west of downtown now stands silently in the trees.

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Fort Worth, Texas
The Stockyards
January 9, 2010

The Stairwell

Toolbox: MonoPhix Lite

It’s winter in North Texas, but there were still leaves on the trees until a couple of weeks ago. The Stockyards were brisk and the winter shadows were long as we roamed Main and Exchange with our cameras, fighting daylight and the lingering Golden Hour.

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UPDATE 03.10.11: We’ve updated this list for 2011. Be sure to check out our new post “The Ten Best FREE iPhone Photo Apps” featuring both free camera replacements and some great free iPhone photo apps. =M=

Recently, I wrote about The Best Free iPhoneography Apps: Camera Replacements. Now that you’ve shot your image, how are you going to process it? Here are nine great image editing apps and best of all, their price is free!

I realize that this list is not complete. There were several apps that I didn’t include for various reasons. In compiling this list, I found some apps that duplicated features of others. In those cases, I chose what I felt to be the app that did the job quickest, easiest and best. Also, there are great free apps being released all the time.

Some of these apps may be ad-supported, but none of them add a watermark to your images and all save at or really close to your iPhone’s full resolution, unlike many lite photo apps available. These are all full-featured apps and they produce good, if not outstanding effects. Again, for little more than bandwidth and real estate on your iPhone’s screen, there are some gems to be found in the photography section of the App Store. These apps should start you off with a well-rounded iPhoneography toolbox or enhance your existing iPhone “camera bag” — and all for free.

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Friday, January 8, 2010, the Chicago Art Department hosted an exhibition that was the culmination of a several week program to explore and push the boundaries of art created with iPhones. With an emphasis that included several media not just iPhoneography, iPhone therefore iArt presented outstanding works from local Chicago artists, as well as submissions by other artists from around the globe.

iPhone therefore iArt. Photo by mARTa Sasinowska

If you weren’t able to attend the Chicago exhibit, here’s the Chicago Art Department Flickr set with pictures of the event and some of the art. iPhoneographer Kay Frederick was there as well and has posted her photos of the event here.

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