There is no getting away from my love of photography and cameras. My favorite thing in the world is going somewhere, anywhere, and just wondering around pointing my lens at things. The simple act of doing so is like mediation to me, and nothing thing else comes close.
Tag: Photography
2023 is the year I finally go RAID (redundant array of independent disks).
After that, a dedicated photo file server.
Then organize images with tags, keywords, geotags, faces. Easily searchable.
Convert to the Digital Negative format and use as backup
One Lightroom catalog per yearly archive as backup.
Make yearbook prints out of the top 24 images per year, two per month.
Apple Photos for cloud storage. Maybe even Flickr.
There are phases I go back and forth with in my photography such as mobile-only for awhile or a professional camera. This article will discuss my continuing fascination with iPhoneography and tips on how to make it better.
- Clean the lens on your iPhone
Our iPhones get stuffed inside pockets, purses, backpacks, etc. You’ve seen how dirty your screen can get, now go show your camera lens some love. A clean lens will give you sharper, higher-contrast images. Make it a habit to regularly clean your iPhone camera lenses.
2. Composition
Keep your compositions simple or minimal. Duh.
3. Shoot from various angles
iPhones are compact compared to a heavy DSLR or mirrorless camera. This makes it far more effective when shooting high, low or at various angles. Put your iPhone on a tripod mount and explore all those options too.
4. Get a new camera (app)
The stock iPhone camera app is brilliantly intuitive, but you can get more control with other dedicated camera apps such as Halide or Camera+. These allow you to adjust settings manually, shutter speed, ISO etc. This seems like an appropriate time to mention editing apps.
5. Post-Process Fun
There are plenty of amazing iPhone editing apps but only a few are really worth your time as a serious photographer.
Adobe Lightroom
Hipstamatic
Snapseed
VSCO
Everything else are just fad apps.
With the above apps, you can adjust image exposure, crop to improve the composition, correct image white balance, add beautiful color effects, improve sharpness, and so much more. Many of these apps also offer advanced features, such as vignetting, noise reduction, and masking. If you really want to have fun with editing images, there are specialist applications that’ll remove image backgrounds, objects, and apps that’ll stitch layers images together.
I enjoy editing images. It’s a fun way to enhance your photos, and once you’re done with the basic enhancements, you can have fun adding creative effects.
6. Shoot It Until You Get It
Digital photography has an advantage over film in that you can afford to shoot a lot. You can also make a lot of mistakes that can be forgiven quickly. Pick out your best images later. Don’t delete any photos while you are out shooting. Wait until you are done to properly review.
7. Zoom with your feet
All cameras have two types of zoom options: optical zoom and digital zoom. An optical zoom is created by the camera’s lens. A digital zoom is made by cropping an image. The iPhone deletes pixels to create a zoom effect. Digital zoom destroys the quality of your images.
Don’t sacrifice image quality, just zoom with your feet. Move closer to your subject if possible. If it isn’t possible, then shoot your image and crop later. The difference in quality is improved and you’ll be happier.
8. Hold your phone like a camera
I always shoot in landscape mode (phone is horizontal instead of vertical.) I also almost always shoot with two hands on the iPhone for control and stability.
I am a mixture of both casual and intentional photographer.
Sometimes, the images come to me in a zen-like manner.
I wait, listen and feel for them.
Other times, I shoot deliberation and determination.
I purposefully plan and will them into reality.
I also take images to document as an autobiography of what is going on around me at the moment.
However, as Ansel Adams said:
“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
After nearly thirty years of photography I don’t feel like I have progressed to where I should be and want to be. I’ve almost always shot from the hip, never to be bothered with the technical. My images reflect this. I need to slow down, be more intentional. I need to spend
a hell of a lot of time alone before, during, and after the photography experience.
*Update* I need a project to kickstart this initiative, one that can build a body of work I can be proud of. I do not want to limit myself to one genre though. It is consistent, sure, but boring.
I am on a hiatus with analog film photography for now. The price of film, developing, scanning is getting out of control and is not sustainable for me right now.
I love the results but damn.
Going all-digital for a while.
I was a charter member of the photo hosting site, Flickr since it’s inception back in 2005. Since then it has been a shit-show roller coaster and grew stagnant. It’s been sold more than a few times and then again to a more stable photo host called SmugMug. That seems to have been the life-saver for Flickr. However, I canceled my account back in 2019 for various reasons. A quote from the article on my website:
I am on a roll when it comes to de-bullshitting my life lately. I have been a Flickr photo account user since 2005 and have been through the ups, downs, acquisitions and no more. I simply do not see the value in another photo host with little to no social engagement with other photographers.
Now that Flickr has been stable these past few years, I am back. With unlimited photo and video hosting on a paid Pro plan, I am in the slow process of uploading images. Migrating years and gigabytes worth of data will be worth it. Flickr organizes galleries and albums anyway I see fit and includes camera/image EXIF data. It will be good to see it all in another back-up location to my Archive Vault on the external hard drive.
I am hoping to reconnect with the amazing talent of other photographers there and rebuild the photo community. I use to draw a lot of inspiration from them as well as contribute my two cents as well.
From the creators of Geocaching.com comes a fairly new way to use GPS coordinates to find different locations and learn about them. I just published an Adventure that highlights some street murals in Tulsa.
AL is a free download and free to play. You can get it from the App store here.
As opposed to griping about people on their phones, it may be best to make use of my own iPhone and discover some of those benefits. Some use cases that works for me:
Blog and write with the phone
I use iA Writer on all my devices to write these articles, then press send. From there it is automagically published to my websites.
Process Images
Reviewing my images on Apple devices with Apple Photos is so pleasurable that it reminds me of the analog photo contact sheets. For quick edits of images taken from the phone, to again, publishing them to my website(s.)
Voice Dictation
Forget Siri. I’ll occasionally use this tool for quick Notes or in the Reminders app. Bonus usage in iA Writer too. Writing and blogging by voice is almost 90% accurate so I need to talk slower and enunciate.
Reading
Apple Books or Libby
Reading digital books with these apps is a joy. What better way to spend your time when you are waiting in line in public?
I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.
Ernest Hemingway
My current creative workflow is simple, on purpose. I’d rather be out there shooting than processing or organizing.
I don’t have the time or desire to go out for that one shot that will make me famous. I want to create a body of work. I’m not interested in social media “likes” or new followers scrolling through their feeds quickly and not caring.
Innovate your new workflow by keeping it simple, self-host your own website, create digital, or e-zines in .pdf. Offer prints and downloads of your work instead. This will generate a more positive, direct response from potential followers.
Over 260 images cataloged on a map with GPS coordinates and waypoints. According to my Lightroom software, I only have a little more than 200 to add.
Then I’ll start a new map for geocaches I’ve logged followed by another map highlighting all of the street art I’ve documented. Whew.
Last year, Lomography teased the photo film community with images hinting that they were bringing back the Turquoise film. Development has been ongoing and is scheduled to release fall of this year, 2022. Pre-orders sold out and more have been pushed back until November. I can’t wait that long to experiment with this unique emulation. Below are the examples that Lomo gave us, followed by own attempts to duplicate the results.
Oh well, back to the digital lab to fine tune the process and get those gorgeous colors!
“Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.”
Pablo Picasso
Picasso, when asked what his paintings meant.
Sometimes we create for the sake of creating and seeing what happens. There are times where I go out to shoot & don’t develop the film for months or post-process the digital photos in Lightroom for awhile. I do it just for the experience of creating and exploring.
After amassing about a thousand images of neon, murals and geocaches it is past time that I curate them into a searchable database. This is one of those “shoulda done it sooner” moments but who knew my latest photographic passion would have carried on this long?
I’ve looked around for some inexpensive, do-it-yourself software but I’m coming up with a lot of fluff. For now, I’ve settled on Google My Maps and Google Earth. I hate this.
Every photo taken with a GPS-enabled camera is geo-tagged in their EXIF file. This helps tremendously when my memory fails. GPS coordinates are great when importing/exporting data to the map layer overlays.
My current issue is documenting these locations whilst at the same time snapping more images almost daily to the database. It is a self-inflicted labor of love that only I can appreciate but to me it is worth it.
Each My Map will have a separate genre for neon, one for murals and the other for geocaches.
After those are complete, I will export the .kmz files into Google Earth as a master database wherein all waypoints will be tagged, mapped and displayed.
Google Earth alternative suggestions are welcome. Please!
