Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

In case you missed this, here’s a cool link from Michael Zelbel at Smoking Strobes.com. It’s his method of organizing images on his computer. He and I have similar issues with our photography — we both take a lot of shots, we both work with multiple or subsequent copies of our production files, and we both don’t want to take much time or thought in organizing our images so they’re quick and easy to find.

I don’t use iPhoto to organize my raw iPhoneography. I prefer to work with my images directly on my Mac. I only add my finished, processed images to my iPhoto. Rarely will I add a raw or production image to iPhoto.

Using a consistent folder hierarchy to organize your images helps to cut down the clutter of your raw images and safety shots, as well as keeping your finished files organized and easy to find. Michael’s hierarchy may be a bit much for iPhoneography, especially since most of us process images before they leave the iPhone, but you can modify his approach to fit your workflow.

In forums I frequently got advice that I should absolutely use this or that photo database or this or that professional software to organize my thousands of files. Believe me dude, I’ve been there, done that. What works best for me is a set of folders that gives me no headaches, no technical glinches and which allows me to spend more time behind the camera than in front of the screen.

Read the entire post at SmokingStrobes.com >>>

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Related links: Smoking Strobes

From The Random Photographer blog, here’s an interesting variation of the image-a-day concept — 7 Photos, 7 Songs, 7 Days. In addition to seven (really nice) iPhonoegraphy, “Random Sam” also tagged this set with seven songs — one corresponding to each image. I like his photography, especially his photo “Friday”. The music is a nice touch and adds one more element to each piece.

Here’s the link to “7 Photos, 7 Songs, 7 Days” on Random Photographer. >>>

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One of the issues that occasionally pops up for me is that sometimes pictures taken on my iPhone don’t display with their proper rotation in some, non-Apple instances. I encounter this more often with third-party apps, but it still can be an issue. A new post by TJ Luoma over at TUAW — The Unofficial Apple Weblog gives a very interesting, very technical, very geeky way to fix this issue using a utility called jhead. Personally, I prefer to run my images through Photogene on my iPhone, fix any rotation issues and everything is then fine.

This link isn’t presented here so much as a “how-to” but as another peek behind the curtain as to how the iPhone camera works. Note: I’ve found easier and less intrusive ways to fix this issue (see Photogene mention above). If you’re feeling brave, remember that you’re peeking and poking around data. Be sure you know what you’re doing. Always work on a copy of your image. Any time you’re working with the raw code of a file, there’s a chance that you may hose your image.

Apple uses an EXIF tag to rotate images. This can be a problem when you share images with others. Safari will rotate the image correctly, but no other browser will.

Adding to the trouble is that Mail.app and the Finder will also “auto-correct” the rotation, so it can be hard to tell which images need to be “fixed” and which don’t.

Read the full article here at TUAW.com >>>

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Pixels at an Exhibition at Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley was recently covered by two Bay Area newspapers — The Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. Here’s a link to The Oakland Tribune article, “iPhone enthusiasts mount Berkeley photography exhibit”. The same story was run in both papers. I’m not sure how long this link will stay active.

“While hundreds of the cell phone camera’s fans are passionate about their medium and flock to Web sites such as flickr or use blogs to share their photos, iPhone photography is still very much on the fringes of the mainstream art world. So using a selection of grainy, artful images from his Web site, Bronson and Oakland resident Rae Douglass have mounted “Pixels at an Exhibition” at Berkeley’s Giorgi Gallery, which they believe is the world’s first gallery display devoted exclusively to iPhone photography.”

Read the full story here. >>>

It’s a good read, great publicity for the gallery show, and more good exposure for the art of iPhoneography.

Pixels at an Exhibition runs through February 27, 2010 at Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley.

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While we’re all basking in the new Apple iPad’s warm fuzzy glow today, I thought I’d serve up this classic link from holga blog that I found back in November.

The article contains some good tips to help see things differently. I think the key to a lot of these tips is simply to take time, clear your head, to be more aware of your surroundings. It’s not a how-to article, but more of a change of mind-set article. From personal experience, I’ve found myself recognizing a potential moment and rather than forcing the photo, simply waiting for the photo to come to me.

Zen photography….

Read the entire article on holga blog here >>>

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I was recently interviewed by John Meadows for the On the Log podcast. In “Episode 89: Less is More”, we discuss iPhoneography and using the iPhone with some recent apps to capture the look of old analog photography. It was a fun discussion and I think it’s an interesting interview. Plus, you get to find out whether or not this Texan talks with a twang.

Click here for the podcast On the Log, Episode 89: Less is More >>>

iPhoneography by John Meadows

John took the above photo with CameraBag.

Here’s the link to John’s site, On the Log >>>

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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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Maybe it’s just winter, but there are times when I find myself doing this — either getting in a photography rut or just putting off taking pictures. Sometimes life gets in the way. At other times, it might be less urgent distractions (Twitter? Facebook?). Here’s a link to a post on the MCP Actions blog with a dozen tips to break your photography rut. It’s aimed at professionals and photographers who shoot with rigs, but it still has some good, usable tips for breaking an iPhoneography rut as well.

As iPhoneographers, we have an advantage that others don’t and I’d like to add Tip #13 (#12B if you’re superstitious….).

TIP: Download that cool new photography app you’ve been eyeing. Experiment with it. Learn its quirks. For a dollar or two, it’s like getting a whole new camera. How many professional photographers get to say that?

Click here for 12 Tips to Break Your Photography Rut on MCP Actions >>>

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Here’s an interesting project from photographer Kevin Bauman. It wasn’t photographed with an iPhone, but it’s a very interesting collection of photography from a city that I became fascinated with over ten years ago. The project is called “100 Abandoned Houses” and viewed as whole, I think it’s a stunning, personal photojournal of the decline of one of the U.S.’ great cities.

Ten years ago, I flew to Detroit to catch one of the last baseball games at Tiger Stadium. My friend was a great hostess and drove me around the city, where I saw hundreds of beautiful old buildings mostly abandoned. I could imagine many of these houses were striking in their day. Restored, they’d be mansions here.

As we drove around these old, former neighborhoods, I couldn’t help but think that parts of Detroit were a city in ruins. My friend, Kelly, told me that the backlog for the city to demolish these old buildings was 20 years.

Built with auto industry money, most of these beautiful old houses are now beyond repair.

I like Kevin Bauman’s style of shooting these old houses. His framing is simple and consistent. Every shot is a full-frontal. When viewed as a whole, to me it’s an impressive piece of work.

Click here to see 100 Abandoned Houses.

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My Kodak Vollenda

I used to read Popular Photography magazine religiously as a kid, back when I was shooting Black & White 127 film on the old Kodak Vollenda camera that my grandfather had given me (which I display proudly on the mantle between my Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. AND Sr. baseballs). At that time, I never really understood a lot of the techniques and as a middle schooler, I was never going to be able to afford any of the equipment that was reviewed. The showcases were nice, though, and Pop Photo helped inspire me to think visual.

Recently, PopPhoto published a piece about iPhoneography which interviews and showcases Chase Jarvis, Sion Fullana, Lisa Wiseman and Greg Schmigel. A friend of mine, photographer Greg Woodson, pointed me in the direction of this article. It’s a good read.

Click here to read “Photographers And Their iPhones” on PopPhoto.com

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