Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

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

PixelEx/Pixels at an Exhibition: Dada Left

As part of my Featured Photographer for March 2010, we’ve just posted more exclusive images at Pixels At An Exhibition. You can browse them all if you click here.

Much of it is photography of the street art in Deep Ellum — the area of Elm Street just east of downtown Dallas. Deep Ellum is a strip of three, maybe four streets of bars, restaurants, clubs, tattoo parlors, art galleries, vintage stores, old warehouses and lofts. Baylor Hospital where Mickey Mantle died is a couple of blocks away. Most of the buildings are old — old for Dallas, anyway. Many of them surviving gentrification since the 1920’s.

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Flash Hero
Version 1.2

Bottom line: Not recommended. Two of the three filters work poorly.

Flash Hero is a new “flash fixer” app from Asasa Software which uses three different kinds of exposure enhancements to fix the lighting of a photo.

No two images are the same and many times an exposure enhancement app that does a great job on one image works poorly with another. That’s why I keep several exposure enhancers in my iPhone. Flash Hero attempts to give you three different types of exposure enhancement in one app. The idea is that of the three, one of them will work best to fix your image. It’s a great concept. Unfortunately, two of the filters work poorly and the third is redundant and unnecessary if you already have another slider-based flash fixer, such as Perfectly Clear, Auto Adjust or FlashPhix. All three of these apps produce better results more easily.

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March 14, 2010
Dallas, Texas

Mockingbird Station

Toolbox: FocalLab, CameraBag

If you’ve taken the Blue Line or the Red Line south from Mockingbird Station, you know the big, long escalator down to the platform. Once you step on, there’s a long time to think about where you’re going, the train you’ll take. Three stories below, you step out on to the platform, only a short distance from where the twin tunnels engulf the yellow and white trains.

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March 14, 2010
Fort Worth, Texas

DST

Toolbox: ClassicTOY

I love Spring! I love Spring! I love Spring! The first workday after daylight savings time begins, not so much.

Golden hour shadowplay in the trees in the park.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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

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.

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Just a diversion from this morning….

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sunlines

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

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