Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

EYE’EM CALLING FOR ENTRIES NOW!

EYE’EM has announced a call for entries for the EYE’EM Mobile Photography Award 2010. Entries from any mobile device are accepted, not just iPhones. Also, you are permitted to use desktop apps such as Photoshop to retouch your images.

Sion Fullana is judging this year’s EYE’EM Award. Sion is a professional photographer, journalist and filmmaker living in New York City. He has been featured in photography blogs and magazines, such as Time Out NY, Photocritic.org, American Photo Magazine and Wink-Magazine. In a very short period of time, he has become a celebrated pioneer in cellphone photography, using his 3G iPhone and experimenting with a select group of iPhone photo apps. He is one of iPhoneography’s most recognized members.

More information and links follow the jump. >>>

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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

Since the birth of my FROM THE POCKET project in late 2009, I have received several emails from fellow iPhoneographers — many of whom want to know the applications I use for processing, capturing techniques, subject choices, and so on. As we all know, iPhoneography is a rapidly growing artistic medium and with that, comes the introduction of new artists and iPhoneographers alike. The art and design world is slow to accept iPhoneography as a true expression of art. However, we are seeing that iPhoneographers who are true artists beginning to alter this interpretation. Just like any new form of art, iPhoneography needs to grow and establish artistic legitimacy. There are those who simply take pictures with their iPhone, and those who employ the iPhone as an artistic tool.

This article is directed at my fellow and aspiring iPhoneographers who want to better their iPhoneography experience and artfully improve their images. Below, I have listed 7 simple tips to better your iPhoneography. This will not be a source of suggesting applications you should be using to process images, or how you should hold the iPhone, or how to make your images look “more analog”. My intentions are to provide artful insight into bettering your iPhoneography.

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I didn’t create these. The bakery artisans at Central Market in Fort Worth did. They really are artists and dessert is their palette. Other than the wine department and the cheese section (Central Market is the only place you can get fresh cheese curds in DFW), the Dessert Department is my favorite in the market. Okay, really it’s called the bakery, but that’s what they the place where they make the bread. The Dessert Department is where dreams lined with tiny cream puffs are made.

My dream is to someday walk into Central Market’s bakery and say “I’ll take them all.”

Just Desserts

Toolbox: TiltShift Generator

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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.

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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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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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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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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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