Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

During one of my daily perusal of the App Store today, I came across what I thought was a new photo app, The Diana by Allan Detrich. The Diana camera is one of the classic cameras for modern day lo-fi photography. I thought “Cool! I’d drop a buck for a Diana-like photo app!”

Turns out, The Diana is not a toy camera app. It’s a history of the Diana and all of its variations. Read on to see how in this instance, this is not a bad thing at all….

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There’s about one month until eyephoneography, a high-visibility exhibition at The Hub in Madrid, Spain. This inaugural show features the works of Sion Fullana, Marco La Civita, Isabelle “MissPixels” Gagné, and Greg Schmigel.

We recently posted a link to the interview of Darren Milligan, one of the show’s selection committee. In the lead-up to the Madrid show, the eyephoneography blog has posted an interview with Sally Gutierrez Dewar, another member of the show’s selection committee. In particular, I found her views on smart phones and how they are effecting our everyday lives interesting. She also discusses her favorite images of each photographer in the exhibit — they are four excellent and visually powerful images. Sion’s is one of my favorites from his catalog and the image she selected by by Marco is powerful, stark and moving.

Other technologies have had an impact on what could be called our modes of seeing, but smartphones and social networks are radically mutating the whole sphere of visual thinking, shifting it from the individualistic gaze to communities of vision.

The entire interview is here on the eyephoneography blog.

eyephoneography #1 opens September 17, 2010 at The Hub in Madrid, Spain. Visit eyephoneography.com for more information.

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Leica M8 back for iPhone 4 case. Photo credit: BeyondtheTech

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While the rest of us are waiting patiently for our free iPhone 4 cases from Apple, Life In LoFi reader Gary Moyer turned me onto his cool new iPhone 4 case — one that looks like a Leica M8 camera.

How to create your own mock Leicaphone after the jump. >>>

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We’re about a month away from eyephoneography, a high-visibility exhibition at The Hub in Madrid, Spain. This inaugural show features the works of Sion Fullana, Marco La Civita, Isabelle “MissPixels” Gagné, and Greg Schmigel.

Darren Milligan is one of the judges of the show and was recently interviewed on the eyephoneography blog. He is a designer and director of digital media projects at the Center for Education and Museum Studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and he’s been creating mobile phone photography for years prior to his iPhone. He has a strong visual background and it’s very interesting to read his insights on iPhone photography, mobile phone photography, and his thoughts on several of the pieces in the Madrid exhibit.

Photography, for me, has always been deeply involved in my own process of memory-making. An image of a moment or place from my past is a tool: a key to unlock the rich replay of that experience. I became aware of the power of mobile photography several years ago when I moved to Washington and looked for a method to document my explorations of a new city and to witness the ways that city would inevitably change me.

The entire interview is here on the eyephoneography blog.

eyephoneography #1 opens September 17, 2010 at The Hub in Madrid, Spain. You can visit eyephoneography.com for more information, or read our previous announcement on Life In LoFi here.

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Here’s a cool one. The September 2010 issue of Macworld features a cover shot of an iPhone 4… that was shot and post-processed using an iPhone 4!

Macworld contributing photographer, Peter Belanger, used basically the same rig he would have used to photograph the 4 with a Phase One P65+ digital camera. The main difference? He used tungsten lights because of the iPhone’s inability to sync with strobes.

To process the image, he used PhotoForge to remove a slight green cast from the image and Resize-Photo to bring the image to Macworld’s print specs.

Links to the Macworld cover are after the jump. >>>

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Many iPhoneographers — myself included — upload and display images on Flickr. More iPhone photographs end up online than in print — one of the reasons why I’ll sometimes give a pass to a photo app that doesn’t support full resolution. Other than sharing images with a close network of family and friends, many of us post to the Flickr community in an effort to have our images seen by a broader segment of the photography community. Basically, Flickr can be a great place to show.

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Scott Bourne over at Photofocus just posted about new service from ImageRights.

ImageRights is a service that helps photographers scan the web for unauthorized use of their images and helps prevent image piracy. Now, they are offering this service to photographers for free.

You may not make your living as a professional photographer. If not, you may not care about compensation for infringement. But you still may want the right to demand attribution or take down. ImageRights can help you make that happen.

You can read more about ImageRights in Scott’s post over at Photofocus.com.

As iPhoneography grows and emerges as an artform, unauthorized use of our images will be come an ever-increasing problem. Many iPhoneographers are quick to upload their images to as many venues as possible in order to gain visibility and exposure — increasing the odds that your images may get nicked. I usually don’t mind my work being used around the web for non-commercial purposes. I, too, am glad for the exposure. I do mind when my work is used improperly, not credited to me, or even worse passed off as the work of someone else.

The iPhoneography community is creating some amazing work. ImageRights is another tool to help you protect your intellectual property. I’ve added a permalink to the sidebar here.

I opted against a graphic for this post. Somehow, it felt wrong to grab the ImageRights logo from their website even for promotional purposes….

You have to click through a few screens to get to the free service. The basic package is only $9.95/month. I’ve signed up. If you are using ImageRights, let us know in the comments section how it’s working for you.

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Special thanks to Dixon Hamby for this tip.

When the lost iPhone 4 prototype turned up on Gizmodo several weeks ago, I dug a little deeper and wrote a follow up piece focusing on the iPhone 4′s camera. It looks like I was pretty close.

With the iPhone 4 street date just a few days away, Chris Foresman on Ars Technica takes us on a more in-depth tour of both of the iPhone 4′s cameras. It’s a great read with a lot of in-depth information and specs on the new camera.

In all, the iPhone 4 offers a lot of photo and video power for the average user—some may even find it enough to consider eschewing a standalone point-and-shoot still camera or compact camcorder. Those with more serious imaging needs won’t be ditching a DSLR or 3-CCD video camera anytime soon, but there are a few welcome improvements for casual use. Judging from the samples Apple has provided so far, the improved camera hardware looks like it will be a solid performer.

Click here to read the entire story, Sizing up the iPhone 4 for shutterbugs, on Ars Technica >>>

Many of us will have our hands on one on Thursday. It looks like the iPhone 4 camera will be a significant improvement over the 3GS camera and a huge improvement over a 2G/3G camera. I’m looking forward to the wider angle of view and the greatly improved light sensitivity. Here’s hoping that iPhone photo apps catch up to the new hardware soon.

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Big thanks to Knox Bronson at Pixels At An Exhibition for pointing me to this link.