Using the iPhone
Can Influence Creative Choice
by Skip Hunt
Years ago I made the point that it doesn’t matter which camera you use; what mattered most is vision.
In an attempt to prove this, I did a small collection of images with my old Motorola cell phone. The results made the point I wanted, but the lower resolution became restrictive.
When the iPhone came out, I couldn’t wait to take it for a spin. After loading apps, I took it along to make images to illustrate a motorcycle trip through the Southwest toward California from Texas. It was the 3rd generation iPhone 3G. I took it for an easy way to upload images live from the road.
For back up, I took a high-end compact, a Panasonic LX-3 and a Nikon dSLR D300 for book images I was to publish at the end of the trip. (Now available on Amazon).
What I noticed was many of the images I was getting were quite acceptable beyond web use, but not quite there yet. Not long after that trip, I upgraded to the iPhone 4 and hopped a bus for Mexico to travel blog and see what I could come up with over a month’s time. I also took a high-end compact camera for those images that needed a bit more resolution and flexibility, but it was on this trip that I started noticing a difference in the images I made with the iPhone as opposed to a conventional camera. I’m not referring to obvious differences in resolution, but instead the creative aesthetic choices I was making. Not that they were better or worse, just different.
Fast forward to Summer 2011, I decided to fly to the furthest point in Mexico without any particular plan at all. Zig-zagging from coast to coast, through the jungles, mountains, beaches, cities and deserts until I wandered my way back up to Texas two months later. I travel blogged the experience using only the iPhone for audio, video, text and edited photos here.
By this time, I now had plenty of apps and knew how to use them. It’s still better than lugging a laptop along, but there are times when I still crave a bigger screen. Next time and iPad may come along with me as well. Again, I took a high-end compact along, the Olympus XZ-1 this time for back up and for those situations that needed a little more photographic muscle.
Again, I was noticing a remarkable difference between the aesthetic psychology of shooting a conventional camera to using an iPhone full of apps. It wasn’t so much about the convenience of it either, i.e. being able to keep the iPhone in my pocket and available at all times because high-end compacts are small enough now to conveniently keep with you in a large pocket as well. No, there was something different that effected my approach between the two.
My photographic experience goes back more than 30 years to pre-digital days when you didn’t think about digital post production when you make an image. Many of my original habits are still there, like thinking of whether or not the image I was about to make was worth the cost of film, processing and printing. If not, then I wouldn’t press the shutter button. I’ve still got that habit even though it costs nothing to make a digital image.
What I began to figure out was that when I shoot with a conventional camera, I’m thinking strictly of the composition of light, shadow, color, texture, and how the subject matter moves me. I don’t think about what I can do with it later, but strictly capturing what ever it is that caused me to stop and study a particular scene or objects within a scene.
When I use the iPhone to make images, I consider all of those things as well, but because the camera is very limited in function I’m also thinking of what app I’m going to process this image with. I’m no longer strictly thinking of how this image will convey how I’m motivated by a scene, but whether that scene can also serve as good source material or digital clay to be molded into something else via software applications.
The images made from this trip with the conventional camera have just been published and available for sale in a beautiful new photo book at MagCloud. Click the link below to preview or order.
Aamora chose Feb 2012 to spread iPhoneography ❤
if you see something you enjoy, feel free to leave a message below for the artist; remember, you can also click on any of the photos on aamora to view it separately or leave a comment directly under the photo
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Austin, TX based member Skip Hunt is a wandering soul attempting to break the chains & surf free atop wavelengths within the visible spectrum. View his website, travel blog, tumblr, or aamora.com.
Thank you Gail! Something about showing other people what you see makes it so much more enjoyable don’t you agree? It’s like if you are alone, you don’t take a photo and just enjoy a sunset or scene all for yourself without anyone to share it with makes it somehow less for some reason. Almost like, if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a noise.
Skip, I enjoyed the journey! Thanks for sharing your words and images. I love seeing the world through your eyes!
Once again you put the WOW in everything you see around you Skip.
I may be old according to my children but I am by no means old fashion. Unlike Buzz, I have come to embrace any or all technological advances, especially when it means that my creativity is not impeded by its usage.
Mobile phones have certainly come a long way in making the act of recording images much simpler & easier for us all, they still have some bugs to sort out but that is the part of the curve to improvement that has been ever thus. However, capturing what one see´s around us is not equally a given. Again the old arguments surface about what once was involved in creating photographs, yet for me it is a device no different from any other used in the past to freeze moments in time & space. I tell you personally, after having spent the better part of my life in chemical drenched darkrooms these devices & advances in photography are nothing but liberating for me. I just wished they had gotten here sooner. These are not unlike any other tools that we once carried in our kit bags as photographers and possess that outcome and have complete control of the nature of what we wish to express. I find that it has only made it more possible to be freed from the enslavement of what was once the office/darkroom/studio space. It really has become a sort of portable second brain if you will, that has only recently made it more efficient for us to realise our own creative potentials. Personally, I find that the future holds a very exciting time ahead for us all man I can´t wait for the day we can all have our very own optical camera implants. I guess we will all be sh*ting prints out of our arse´s one day very soon in the near future. Well, I guess not all technological advances and changes will be all that wonderful.
Yet, at the same time I get what Buzz is implying here that there are certain things that must remain sacred, this is balance one must strike with oneself with such conveniences, people do still have to get a better handle on that aspect of the technology by not letting it dominate every single aspect of their lives. It can seem to be all powerful & mesmerizing at times.
There is a place for everything and I believe that Skip has found such a balancing point. It is perhaps his very own version of a Shangri-La created via the tools that he has adapted into his creative mind space. Bravo Skip on giving us another marvelous essay and journey once again. Awaiting your next installment from whatever part of the world you find yourself in. Great work as always.
Thanks a zillion Mario! Looks like we think much alike. I get what he’s saying about not having a phone in your camera though. Look forward to not being able to be reached when I’m traveling and have the phone part turned off. 🙂
Thank you very much Marie. It’s my pleasure. 🙂
Thanks for this journey, Skip. As always your work is stunning, no matter what cam. I really liked reading about how different equipment effects your take on a subject.
Thanks Aaron! Layouts always looks great on this site. Honored to be here. 🙂
Excellent essay, Skip, and as always wonderful striking images.
I live in Delhi having spent half of my adult life in India I am a photographer, self taught and self conscious about being a life long neophite. I appreciate your work and words although I hope never to have a cell phone as I’m old fashioned and appreciate being alone. I realize they have changed the world for the better but, as I said, I’m old fashioned. I’m pleased to be part of Aamora and look forward to seeing more of what you do and your words about how you do what you do. I consider a camera a means of capturing what I see. I still seer what I saw.
I can appreciate that. When I travel, my iPhone is in “airplane” mode. No calls or emails while walking around. Later, at the coffee shop I edit and upload. More convenient than carrying a laptop. 🙂