diptych # 132 (oddly exalted) ~ process / iPhone camera

Freshine / iPhone picture • viewfinder look ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Today on LENSCRATCH, there an exhibition of cell phone pictures - 5 pages worth - which Aline Smithson prefaced by writing:

Cell Phone photography has entered the fine art arena kicking and screaming and making so much noise that eventually the photography world is paying attention. With apps that replicate just about every photographic process and accessibility to every man, woman, baby, and dog, cell phone photography is a force to be reckoned with.

It should come as no surprise that cell phone picture making has enter the art world (fine or not so fine) inasmuch as, in the past, all manner of "non-standard / main stream" picture making instruments - as examples: Polaroid, Holga / crappy cameras, pinhole, and outdated cameras of all kinds - have had their picturing results accepted into the art world. Cell phone cameras are just another manifestation in that procession.

I am enjoying my messing around with the iPhone, not so much with the push-the-button camera apps - apps with a limited number of "canned" effects which any man, woman, child, or house pet can use. Instead of using the camera apps, I have been making "straight" iPhone pictures and then applying my own process-replication looks.

My process-replication looks are created in PS. I make "master" files for any process / camera I care to replicate. Those files are multi-layered, each with infinitely variable possibilities which can be used to customize the look of the replication depending upon the characteristics of the picture used in its making.

In the case of the viewfinder picture in today's diptych, I was able to adjust the intensity of the corner vignette and focusing screen "fog" to best suit the visual characteristics of the "raw" iPhone picture of the blue liquid. The other capability I have, exercised here, is to make a split-focus effect in the center of the viewfinder. In development is a focusing screen scratch / dirt layer and a viewfinder frame made from a picture of an actual TLR viewfinder to include the surrounding mechanicals as seen in a typical TLR viewfinder.

Why am I doing all this, you might ask? Simply, in a word, fun.

The only clitch I foresee is the possibility of getting sucked up in a gear race - I'm using an "ancient history" iPhone 4S and, of course, both the 5S and 6S are incrementally superior, camera-wise, not to mention the 7S and the 8S and the 9S and the ...........

Comments

[John Linn]

There is no iPhone 6S (yet), just the 6 and the 6 plus.

The exhibition of cell phone pictures are really interesting. Of course some pictures are better than others, but overall a good way to spend some time, and a good source of inspiration.