February 3, 2010

iPhone Photos

Purely for fun, I’ve been taking photos with my iPhone and posting them on twitter, at the rate of about one a day. Chase Jarvis’s work on the The Best Camera project, together with his handy iPhone app, inspired me. Of course, these photos have technical limitations. The iPhone camera can’t compare to a DLSR; […]

Kite Surfer

Water

Of course, these photos have technical limitations. The iPhone camera can’t compare to a DLSR; but that isn’t the point. Every photo helps you frame the world and work on your composition, so it is all good practice.

That said, it is amazing how moody and atmospheric iPhone photos can be. Moreover, it is impressive how much an application running on the iPhone can do developing your images.

And, if you have no other camera with you, there’s no reason not to use the iPhone and take the most creative image you can to remember an important day, or occasion.

You can see more of my iPhone photos here.

Tagged Creativity, Daily Life, iPhoneography, Photography, Trends

Adrian Neville 15 years ago

Cool, Fernando. I have a Ricoh GX200 which comes everywhere with me but I have been caught out once or twice and used my iPhone. And you are right, the images can be very atmospheric.

As the original 35mm masters went for portability and ease of use over quality and the Ricoh delivers better quality than the original 35mm cameras (not over 200 ISO), I am happy to leave the big pro dslr at home. In fact I find the quality of many a photographic book too bloody good; unrealistically pristine.

Cameras in phones will continue to get better, one day people could be leaving their pocket digital at home. All the best, Adrian

Fernando Gros 15 years ago

Adrian – provocative thoughts. I still remember an amazing “swimming” photo you took with a little digital camera. You are right about the coldness of some photo books. Fascinating that people use plugins to reproduce film grain, give photos a lomo or polaroid look etc.

Toni 15 years ago

The plugins you refer to are a bit like using a tiesco, airline or Kay to create a particular guitar tone. It sounds horrid alone, but works in the context. It’s easier to take a great tone and sod it up than try to make a nasty tone (and playability) sound good, although a crappy guitar may inspire one to try something different. On that basis, well done for finding a use for an otherwise less useful feature.

I happen to have a personal preference for the ultra-sharp and clear type images, but occasionally an ‘arty’ image can be good enough with composition or use of colour to work well *for me* too. And while Rayographs may have been cutting edge originally, they leave me wondering “why did you bother?”. Everyone to their own preference.

Toni, I think one of the best musical analogies is the role of analog gear and analog simulating plugins in the recording chain. I’m not talking about amp and pedals, but mic preamp, eq and compression. Since I started using eq and compression plugins, like the UAD stuff, I realised something big that was missing in my sound. It’s a subtle thing, but I would never go back to the straight mic to computer route for anything other than the most RAW acoustic stuff.

iPhone Photos

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