“I really love the look of high end digital photography and commercially I wouldn’t shoot anything but. But I miss the imperfections of LoFi photography. I believe, however, that those wonderful surprises that the limitations of your equipment produce are far outweighed by the opportunity to capture in photography all the found moments that we all experience everyday.”
Words I said in my first post for my new blog, Life In LoFi. My camera of choice at the time was an iPhone 2G.
Two years. 1041 posts (including this one). 6186 comments. 3,890 Facebook followers. Over 286,084 unique visitors. Today is the two year anniversary of Life In LoFi. “Since 2009” may not sound like much, but it’s an eternity in internet years.
It was two years ago today that I created Life In LoFi on WordPress.com. I started writing photo app reviews for another, now long dormant blog of mine. There were photo apps that were helping me use my iPhone as a work tool for my graphic design business. After a few weeks, though, it was clear to me that I had to split the two out.
The blog has grown. In the early days, I was excited when I’d hit 25 pageviews a day. Since then, the blog has grown to reach thousands of unique readers each month from nearly every part of the globe.
I’ve seen iPhoneography grow from the 2 MP camera of the iPhone 2G through the gorgeous 5 MP camera on the iPhone 4. Soon we’ll have the new camera of the iPhone 4s/5 to play with. Back in the day, apping was running Snapture on a jailbroken iPhone 2G. There was color, Black & White and sepia (but Snapture had a full-resolution digital zoom!)
The first apps that got me excited about production and apping and making my iPhone photos look like they came from any camera other than an iPhone were Photogene, PhotoForge and CameraBag. Back then, Photogene and PhotoForge were revolutionary. Both, especially PhotoForge, were Photoshop for the iPhone and finally freed me from the need to be tied to my Mac to make color corrections and apply basic effects.
Back then, Camera Genius was my camera app of choice. It was revolutionary. It had zoom, rule-of-thirds gridlines and anti-shake — features we take for granted in camera apps today.
I’ve seen Hipstamatic grow from the 100 to the beast that is the 225 today. The John S is still one of my favorite filters on the iPhone.
I’m very proud of the body of work we’ve amassed here these past two years.
The art of iPhoneography has grown and flourished over the past two years. While there are those who argue that “it’s just photography,” I think the fact that all of our photography and production is performed on the device allows us to carve out our own little corner of the photography playground.
In doing the blog, I’ve had the great privilege of watching new artists emerge and watching iPhonegraphers push the boundaries of what’s possible during production. iPhoneography pioneers like Greg Schmigel, Sion Fullana, Jeremy Edwards and others embraced the iPhone in their street and candid photography, making the camera and the style almost synonymous. Early iPhoneographers such as Dixon Hamby, Daniel Berman, Dominique Jost, Marco La Civita, Tony Cece, and many many others used the iPhone to create great photography — photos that would be art regardless of the device that created it. Early appers like Maia Panos and Jose Chavarry would start with a photograph, app it up, and create a new, wonderful work of art.
The newer artists who emerge share continue to grow the art and their vision. Many of them are creatively pushing and redefining the limits we thought existed with the iPhone.
In the past two years, it’s always a pleasure for me when I can meet another blogger or iPhone photographer. While I consider the blog a two-way street — I’ve gotten to know of many of you through your comments here, on Facebook and Twitter, I’m still a real-world kinda guy and always love to meet, chat and swap stories in person.
So, today, LoFi is two. I still love to write it and I still love to share it. Looking ahead, I can’t wait to get get my hands on the new iPhone and its camera. Although with each iteration of the device, the iPhone has grown further away from the digital lo-fi that was the original focus of this blog, there are always plenty of photo apps to help dirty up our new, sharp, 8 MP photos.
First and foremost, I want to thank my fiancé, Stacy Anderson. She’s also lived with the blog for the two years and has been very patient with me throughout all of this. I’m sorry, honey, for all the date nights that were delayed because I had to post a breaking news story or a post on that app sale that just couldn’t wait. She’s also pointed me to some great stories that I’ve shared. I think she’s a great photographer as well.
I’d like to thank the great additional writers we’ve had who have helped the past two years, including Jason L. Parks, Glyn Evans, Edgar Cuevas, Jason Feather, Jay Lemiux, and Jeff White.
I’d like to give big thanks, separate and in her own paragraph, to Nox Dineen. She’s an excellent writer. I love reading her work, whether it’s here on LoFi or one of her other outlets. Nox, I’m glad you’ve hung your shingle here for a while.
Big thanks to the app developers who write the code to make our mobile phones do all of these wonderful things. I realize that you pour your time, money and heart into these apps. Sometimes, there are a lot of great photo apps out there that one guy just doesn’t have the time to look at.
I’m very grateful to each any every one of you for visiting, whether it’s once, once daily, or once every hour (on Hipstamatic update days — you know who you are….). I consider myself just a guy who writes, who raves or bitches about photo apps. Every now and then, I take and share pictures. I greatly appreciate the time you spend here reading, discussing and sharing.
You are the ones who really keep this going. Thank you.
=M=
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