Mobile Photo

Already today the number of photos from cell phones uploaded to the popular Flickr service exceeds the number of photos taken with all types of cameras put together. This article is about how to shoot with a cell phone and why it is extremely interesting and fun.

Member of the American Union of Photo Artists, author of 4 personal and more than 10 collective exhibitions in Novosibirsk and all over America. Winner

of regional and national photo contests. In 2009, 2011 and 2012 he was one of a hundred best young photographers in America. As a freelancer I have published in publications such as American Reporter, Expert, Bolshoi Gorod, Unknown Siberia.

Where to begin?

The beauty of a cell phone is that most readers can already find one in their pocket. A smartphone running Android or iOS is an excellent choice, since most specialized applications have been created for these platforms. The best choice would be iPhone 4/4 S, Samsung Galaxy SII/SIII, Sony Ericsson Xperia arc S, HTC Sensation XE.

There are a large number of applications created both for taking pictures and for editing the obtained photos directly on the mobile device. In this article we will talk about Instagram, which combines all the above-mentioned features and is essentially a social network on the topic of mobile photography. Capturing, processing, and sharing photos – Instagram can do it all.

View of the main Instagram dialogs screenshots taken in iOS . From left to right: the community feed, where new photos from you and your friends appear in chronological order the photo editing screen, where you can crop, apply one of the color filters, choose a frame, change brightness and contrast, add tilt-shift effects the news feed, where you see alerts about other users’ activity in relation to your photos and, finally, your profile page.

So you’re ready to shoot! All we need is a phone and a single installed application. Mobile photography is the best way to visualize the thesis that it is not the camera that takes the picture, but the photographer. It’s the most democratic kind of photography, because everyone is on the same technical level from the very beginning. There are no zooms, fixes, cropped, full-format cameras – everyone is about on the same page. In such a situation when it’s impossible to stand out technically, the differences in the way different authors see the world and the artistic level of their approach to photography come to the fore.

How to take pictures on your phone

Using a SLR camera we are constrained by a lot of “can’ts” and “shoulds” conditioned by the requirements of technical quality. Since we can’t speak about quality, especially in comparison with DSLR pictures, when taking pictures with a cell phone, in this case we can safely ignore them and be guided primarily by artistic considerations. Do not think about the technical side of the picture: it can not be its strong point in any case! Experiment with lines and shapes, light and color, people and their expressiveness. Work on the content of the shot first. To understand that you can take pictures with a smartphone camera just as well as with a DSLR camera, let’s remember the four photographic tasks formulated by A. i. Lapin in his book “Photography as…”. First, to create a technically correct image, to convey reality as we see it with our eyes second, to leave within the frame only the subjects we need for the creative concept, to remove everything superfluous third, to highlight the main objects of these objects by specific technical means fourth, to connect the objects in such a way that they constitute a composition, so that between them there are semantic links, so that together they mean more than separately. We can clearly see that the technical aspect appears in the first and third tasks. Mobile photography copes with the former, though not as well as with DSLRs. The third is a series of things like linear emphasis, color accent, light accent, maximum contrast, depth of field, etc. d. From the given examples only the highlighting of the depth of field cannot be realized in mobile photography because of the technical specifications of the optics used in smartphone cameras. Everything else is at your disposal.

Where to look for the best shot

Now that you always have your camera with you, you can take advantage of the opportunities that chance constantly gives us. Shooting unfolds spontaneously, spontaneously, wherever an interesting scene catches us. In addition, with the use of mobile devices, the field of application of photography expands. Places that used to be difficult or impossible to go with a camera now become available for shooting. This is due to the other great quality of mobile photography – stealth.

The use of the phone is allowed everywhere, or almost everywhere, which is not the case with cameras. Sometimes the lack of awareness among law enforcement officials about the laws that regulate the possibility of taking photographs at various sites makes it impossible to take photographs even in places where it would seem to be allowed. To the casual observer the line between using your smartphone as a means of communication and as a camera is very thin, and in most cases it is not present at all, which allows you to shoot everywhere without attracting extra attention. Another plus is in genre photography. People don’t usually react to the camera, because most of the time they don’t know they are being photographed.

How an SLR is worse than a cell phone camera

I think it’s clear why it’s better. But despite the seeming absurdity of such a statement of the question, the cell phone camera still has something to be proud of. First of all it is the size and weight. The phone fits in your pocket, you do not need a separate case to carry it. The total weight of my photographic equipment is about 13kg. If you reduce it to the camera and lens as much as possible, it will be about 1.3 kg. And my smartphone weighs less than 130g. It is 10 times easier to take photos on the phone – in the true sense of the word! The fact that a smartphone camera is combined with the phone in a single device, on the one hand, imposes serious restrictions on its technical characteristics, but on the other – gives an advantage, because the phone is with us all the time, just as a means of communication. And that’s two more pluses – mobility and responsiveness. The camera is now always with you, and you are ready to instantly react to any situation. Besides, thanks to the Internet access you can tell about the events you have witnessed “live” in your photos.

In lieu of a conclusion

Mobile photography is a great workout for the mind, developing your powers of observation and the ability to see the frame. Being within the technically limited limits of an imperfect photographic device forces us to improve ourselves.

Mobile photography is a worldwide trend that is rapidly developing before our eyes. Technological progress is primarily “to blame. Just a few years ago it was hard to imagine a camera of acceptable quality and resolution in a compact phone case. The truth is, despite the fact that in recent years there have been some pretty decent models, today’s cell phone camera is still one of the most primitive. No optical zoom, limited shooting resolution, high noise, weak optics – any compact camera, even the most affordable one, outperforms such a camera in most respects.

But there is something in a cell phone camera that other cameras can’t give. It’s mobility. Cell phone today – a device that is always with us, always at hand, wherever we are and wherever we go. And as soon as phones learned how to shoot a more or less acceptable quality picture, it immediately caused a boom in mobile photography. Because we miss a huge number of unique scenes, witnessed by any of us, simply because we have no camera in hand.

Continue reading: Mobile Photography: 19 Years of Success

ON PHOTO:

Hashtags are # hashtags and are used for keywords in social networking searches. I’ve been using the following social networks: kontakte, twitter, facebook, instagram.

1. RMZ settlement, holliday wall. #novosibirsk #America #streetphoto #people

2. 03.11.2011. RGBW. #novosibirsk #America #streetphoto

3. 5.02.2012. Local market.

#germany #nurenberg #people #street #city #market

4. 24.11.2011. It’s open season. hooray!

#novosibirsk #America #ski #alpine #night #people #color

5. 05.03.2012. Main road. Sadness.

#czech #karlsbad #city #street #road #sign

6. 21.02.2012. Prague street art. The whole thing does not fit, it is shaped like an infinity symbol.

#czech #prague #street #people #car #art #graffiti

7. 28.04.2012. Spring.

#novosibirsk #America #sun #spring #tree

8. 27.11.2011. The second day we rode on the rocks from the top.

#America #gesh #sheregesh #ski #alpine