Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

Celebrating the creativity of iPhone users

iPhone Photography Awards is accepting submissions for their annual 2010 competition.

All photographers compete for the top award, the IPPA Photographer of the Year. Images will be reviewed on the basis of artistic merit, originality, subject, and style.

This year’s top prize is an 8GB iPod touch. The work of the top winner and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Place Winners on each category will be publicized on IPPA online gallery and published in the IPPA Annual Winners Book, published at Blurb.

All 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners from each categories will receive an IPPA certificate. Judges will also award several Certificates of Honorable Mention to entries to acknowledge talent.

Copyright and all other rights remain that of the photographer. Any photograph used by IPPA shall carry the photographer’s credit line. Use may include publication in any IPPA media sponsor publication.

Entry fees range from $2.50 to $18.50 and are based on the number of images you submit at that time. Entry fees cover the cost of administration and promotion.

Deadline for submissions is March 31, 2010.

You can also view the 2008 and 2009 winning entries at www.ippawards.com.

Click here for more information or to submit entries.

~~~~

ProCamera
Version 2.7

Bottom Line: Highly recommended!

ProCamera

A while back, I promised a full review of a previous update of ProCamera. I’m glad I waited until now.

In my idea box of articles I want to write is one for a “FrankenCam” app. For a long time, all of the features that I wanted in a camera app were spread out across several camera apps. I wanted to write an article — more like a wish list to developers — of the features that I wanted in one camera app.

I no longer need to write that article. The new 2.7 update of ProCamera by daemgen.net now includes every feature that I want that’s allowed by Apple in an iPhone camera app… and a whole lot more.

Read the rest of this entry →

March 6, 2010
Old Texas Highway 183
Fort Worth, Texas

Saturday Night on Belknap 01

Saturday Night on Belknap 02

Saturday Night on Belknap 03

Saturday Night on Belknap 04

Toolbox: MonoPhix, Best Camera, CameraBag (Lolo)

=M=

~~~~

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 >>>

=M=

~~~~

Related links: Smoking Strobes

March 7, 2010
Oscar Night
Dallas, Texas

Diner

Toolbox: Vint B&W, TiltShift Generator

Another image in this series, “Nighthawk“, also appears through March as part of my exclusive Featured iPhontographer series on Pixels at an Exhibition.

=M=

~~~~

BlueHour
Version 1.2

Bottom Line: A good utility to help plan twilight photography.

BlueHour

There are two special types of twilight called blue hour and golden hour. Both create awesome light for photographers. Blue hour occurs before sunrise and after sunset. The sky turns deep blue during this period of time. The Golden hour occurs right after sunrise and just before sunset when everything has an golden-orange tint (In Texas, the Golden hour is really more like the Golden twelve minutes….).

Of course, these times change daily. Knowing when these times are gives you the opportunity to shoot in some great light. BlueHour by Baum Computer & Graphics is a simple utility that tells you the approximate times of the Golden hours and the Blue hours for the current day.

Read the rest of this entry →

Just a diversion from this morning….

=M=

sunlines

Toolbox: Hipstamatic (John S lens, Ina’s 1969 film)

~~~~

Pixels at an Exhibition
www.pixelsatanexhibition.com
through March 2010

His Name is Freddy

This month, March 2010, I am glad and honored to have been invited to be the first featured photographer for Pixels at an Exhibition. Knox Bronson is the curator and webmaster for PixelEx and helped put together the recent Giorgi Gallery exhibit of iPhone photography.

I recently shot a photo story just for this gallery. They’ll only be posted at PixelEx this month.

I love the spontaneity of shooting with an iPhone. Despite the relatively low resolution of my 2G, it really can take remarkable photos. More importantly, it’s there with me all the time to capture remarkable images. As they say, I have a camera that I sometimes use to make phone calls.

Head over to my intro page on PixelEx and you can click here to view my images.

Thank you, Knox et al, for this opportunity.

I hope y’all enjoy my photography. Thank you for visiting.

=M=

~~~~

Link:  Pixels at an Exhibition

Autofocus for 2G/3GCamera
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Nice faux-DOF but hampered by less than full-res output

Autofocus

Autofocus for 2G/3G Camera by JFDP Labs brings sharp focus and gradual depth of field (DOF) to the iPhone 2G and 3G cameras. The app is optimized for the older generation iPhones which have no built-in focus features at all. It doesn’t modify the hardware on these devices. It does not add hardware autofocus to the devices. It achieves the focus effect by either automatically or allowing you to manually select and define a focus area and then reproducing a gradual depth of field focus blur from that point.

The focus effect is adjustable, subtle and nice, but the app has a few problems in this initial release.

Read the rest of this entry →

February 18, 2010
Hurst, Texas

Protect This House

Toolbox: MonoPhix, FocalLab

Protect this house. Okay, I will.

No model release needed.

=M=