Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

San Francisco, California
January 31, 2010

The Castro Gate

Toolbox: CameraKit

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San Francisco, California
January, 2010

Blue Train to the G Stop

The F Train

Powell Street Station

Toolbox: Gorillacam, CameraKit, Format126, Vint B&W

Three trains in San Francisco.

People going somewhere. People going nowhere. People moving or waiting to move.

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This updated Camera Bag post will also go in the navbar above. I wanted to share the evolution of my iPhone. You can read my original Camera Bag post here.

Some of my other camera apps. Page 4 on my iPhone

The best camera is the one that’s with you and the one that’s with me nearly all the time is my first generation 8 GB iPhone 2G.

I don’t use one app exclusively to shoot with. I have several and try to match up the image with the app. One of the features that makes the iPhone camera unique is the availability of thousands of photography-related apps. For less than the cost of a DVD, you can basically get a whole new camera experience.

iPhone apps are constantly being created, updated and improved. Since I first wrote my original Camera Bag post, several new apps have been released and several apps have been improved to the point where they have leapfrogged ahead as far as functionality and performance.

I find myself shooting with many different apps than the first time I wrote about my iPhone’s camera bag. Here’s my updated toolbox — the go-to apps I’m currently using.

Read the rest of this entry →

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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CameraKit

CameraKit by Tetsuya Chiba is on sale for $0.99 USD for a limited time — that’s 50% off. Even at its regular price, this is a worthwhile purchase.

CameraKit is a camera and post-processing app that acts almost as a digital darkroom on your iPhone. You can load images from your iPhone’s entire photo library, which is how I use it. None of its features are unique, but here they are nicely packaged, well implemented, simple to use, and make it easy to experiment.

Read the rest of this entry →

November, 2009
Fort Worth, Texas

"Column"

Toolbox: Zoom Lens, MonoPhix, CameraKit

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.

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November 18, 2009

Today was my every-five-week hair day. When you have a hairline like mine (or lack of), it’s really more difficult to keep it looking good, in spite of the reduced amount of source material to maintain.

Sonia, another stylist, wasn’t in today, but the door to her room was ajar and the lights were off. From inside, this new machine sat silently blinking and lights were spinning. It was very Star Trek in its appearance (the J.J. Abrams movie, not the 60’s TV show). Some sort of Electro-something-something device. All I knew was that the lights were blinking and pretty. I snuck in, got my photo, and just as quickly snuck back out of Room Zero.

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"Room Zero"

Toolbox: Camera Genius, ColorKit, FocalLab

November 14, 2009

It’s nice to see some genuine old in downtown Fort Worth. Here’s a photograph of a pre-Depression-era time/date stamp.

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Sidewalk. Welcome to Cowtown

Dallas, Texas

November 07, 2009

Brick

Brick

Toolbox: Spica, CameraKit

Many of the buildings in Deep Ellum near downtown Dallas have been around since the 1920’s. It’s one of the few neighborhoods in Dallas that hasn’t been torn down and rebuilt completely. Deep Ellum is between heydays. Most of Elm Street is closed, boarded up. There are signs everywhere reminding you that putting graffiti on the on the buildings is a crime.

The club Trees opened again. It’s one of the few bars on Elm Street. Upstairs, near the back between the restrooms and the stairs is this gorgeous, old imperfect brickwork. Outside of Trees, on the other side of Elm, another brick wall is painted over with a mural depicting faces from Deep Ellum’s last glory days.

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October 30, 2009

Comet Cleaners number 001

Toolbox: Camera Genius, CameraKit

Old U.S. Highway 80 runs right through old downtown Arlington. The interstate moved everything a few miles north and slowly downtown just faded into insignificance. Old businesses closed or relocated.

Some of the buildings and signs remain, but most are in pretty bad shape now through years of neglect or abandonment. Sometimes during the summer, I’ll take old highway 80 home from Dallas. I’ll turn of the air conditioner and roll down the windows and try to imagine what the road was like 50 years ago.

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