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Why iPhone Photography?

in terms of topics. I mean, I've been up here teaching painting and light room and graphic design. Um, but there's probably one tool. Um, in terms of new technologies that is having war impact, I will say it has a similar impact of what Photoshopped did in the terms of changing the way how we made visual imagery. Photo shop was a complete game changer. But I'd almost say that with things like mobile photography, we're going back to the Gutenberg Press. We're going back to the implications of having this kind of creative powerhouse at our fingertips changing the entire planet. Which is kind of kind of creeping getting getting chicken skin, as we say in Hawaii. Right, Because what the Gutenberg pressed it, Even though everybody didn't have their own press, everybody was able to access information. Everybody was part of the process when our traditional photography came on, especially when Kodak came in with their brownies were Actually everybody could not only access images via photograph...

y but actually have their own camera at their disposal again, another huge change for the entire planet. Because up until then, unless you were a really great artist, there was no way for the individual person to document their view of the world. It was always this area of the craftsman. The artists, very select group of people were the creative visionaries. And all of a sudden, with things like the Brownie, we have the ability for everybody to access that digital photography. I've got one of the first Olympus is even before Canon and Nikon jumped on the boat, Remember, Apple had their first you know, $10 million. 40 pixel y camera, their attempt. It had photography way back before all you guys were born. But digital give the same thing because it released us from the idea of paying for film. We could experiment, we could play. It was immediate. We could see it on the back of the camera. That really was another huge game changer for you to be able to see your work at the same time that you're shooting. It is again, something that had never been done before. Well, now we have this freaking little thing. And again, it started with the with the IPhone as the first, you know, significant smartphone. I'll call it even though we had our you know all sorts of Berries were out there beforehand with little chick lit keypads. But the IPhone really was a game changer, not only because it had a camera that's with you 24 7 but it also through in the dark room into the process. And then it also through in the way to share those you know, via this thing called the Internet and social networking. Before there was any significance, those were networking. It was doing it. So, um, the fact that we have at our disposal not only the creative tool but the way to embellish an elaborate on those stories with that credit told the camera and the software, the APS, the freaky app developers who basically are also changing the way that we think about creative tools. That's one of the things about technology that I think exciting. And I think it's OK. It's OK. So well, with the IPhone is technology always has limitations, and we as artists, don't like limitations. That's the first thing we're gonna do is well, What do you mean? I can't control shutter speed, but I want to control shutter speed. So some freaky app developers going to say, Well, I know how to control shutter speed fake shutter speed by taking 50 shots and we'll blend them all together. And it looked like slow shutter will make it so it'll look like light trails or slow shutter or half a second or five seconds or bulb or whatever. The thing is, is that these developers are not taking no for an answer and coming up with these ways to extend the ability of this tool. So that's really one of the things that we're gonna be focusing on in this class is. Obviously, it's not just the taking of the picture, the capturing of this story that we want to take when we press the shutter. But these APS that for the first time made these very elaborate, um, interpretations of our imagery have right at our fingertips, also not only right at our fingertips, but at the same time that were actually shooting, which is another really interesting component to this whole creative process. Because unless you go back to something like a plan air painting, you know Van Gogh sitting in a in a wheat field, you know, painting wet on wet and pasta with as the lights changing. We've never had that ability to actually work with, um photography with that kind of immediacy where you're actually are still in the same light in which you shot And you're like, If you're like me even though you go while I'm in the moment, I should just be shooting, you know, tweak when I get back, You can't help it right there. Sometimes when this is just so freaky cool that I have to tweak, I have to know what will happen when I pull out that shadow detail. Not only do I shoot the bracketed pairs for high dynamic range image, but I need to combine them together to see what I got. One that's just freaky Cool, but two. It also allows you at the moment. Say, I got it. I didn't get it. The panorama worked here. The explosion wasn't quite right. So this ability toe to continue to interact with the process with this immediacy, I mean, is really unique to, um they the whole artistic environment in which we find ourselves nice. Another element. How maney, for how many people for the first time, probably the first time since they picked up a box of crayons when they were a kid, and somebody looked over their shoulder and said, Isn't that nice, Suzy, It's too bad you're not an artist like your brother and, you know, crush their spirit. And that was, you know, 50 years ago and they've never been creative again. All of a sudden, those There's a huge number millions of people who are picking up things like the IPhone and are going I am creative. I can have fun. I am playing and then you put it into the social network and I'm getting likes. I'm getting heart, some getting all these little things. I'm getting feedback, and with me as a creative person again, that's huge. That's a that's a chicken skin goose bump moment for a lot of people. And that's why I think people are so incredibly freaky, passionate, psychotic about their IPhones and mobile photography in general, because it's the first time for a lot of them that they've had permission to play and play with no consequences and get encouragement as well as do the plane. So there's a 1,000,000 reasons why we're all giddy about mobile photography as well. We should, um and it's only extending. I mean again, the android cameras with 20 and 40 megapixels. The new IPhone five s was just announced yesterday, um, to a day before yesterday. And, um So all these things are changing and all of these air extending the tools that we have at our disposal. And so that's what we're gonna be doing is taking these next couple days and just playing now, as was mentioned, this is my work flow, because there are a 1,000,000,000 different photo APS. Ah, lot of people in the audience, they're going to say. But you forgot, Fred. Is it gonna? But it's so cool You don't know about safe Reddick edible. It's awesome. You know, it walks your cat and cleans your dishes. You don't know about it, dude. And I don't I don't know about everything. And it's amazing. Just like take the difference between people who are light room vs Photoshopped versus Aperture versus whatever those religious debates which in get heated and much blood has been shed over those debates ample by amplified that by 20,000 different photography, APS and people are gonna have very different ways of working and that's actually is great, because we as artists, if you go into ah university, I have my M f A and fine art from San Diego State, and you walk into those environments and you've got people doing way different things ones, clay and metal and steel and welding and this sort of pain going to a painting class, you can find 10 million different styles of painting in a class as it should be. So if you and you will out in the audience and you guys here, um, my particular style, a way of working doesn't fit into yours, that that I won't take it personal, and I hope you don't take it personally. We've got all sorts of things here. What I do want to do that kind of focus in terms of my looking at APS and working with a camera is maybe some insights on certain APS on how they work to get the most out of them again. I know I actually do a times teach a week long workshops on my photography, and then we're shooting out in the field, and then we're playing, and then we get a lot more experimenting. Two days, we thought that two days would be a great great teaser. And hopefully something like this class is something that we can continue on in the future. Okay, so there's a little bit about why it's so cool. And I could pontificate about the philosophical ramifications a mobile photography forever. But you know, who cares if you got the giddy if you got the giddiness if you got the chicken skin, if you got that element, were on the same page. Okay, here's a little samples here. I thought I thought I would start off with some more samples of just some of the stuff that I do with pornography. And then what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna touch on the new five, because that's obviously is a huge question for people, especially since Apple. Some people are saying, Well, it's the same camera that eight megapixels before they make a pixels. Now what's the big deal and move on? Uh, not the case at all. It's very It actually brings up some very good points about how we access this technology and what's the best way to use it. But for now, I thought I would just go through some samples of what I shoot. I travel a great deal, a huge amount, just fortunately, get a chance to speak and teach. All around the world, I usually only teach places that has pumped that have palm trees. Okay, so if you want to invite me to his place that doesn't have palm trees, it's gonna cost you double these air in Tonga on a recent trip down there. This is an example of something that I would not have shot with my DSLR or if I did the camera, the images would still be in a folder on my hard drive somewhere never stitched together. The fact that we have things like our panoramas at our disposal built into our IPhone is fantastic because it's another way of creating. We normally don't if we can't get it in camera, oftentimes we don't fool around with that. So that's where this area of HDR with our big boy big girl cameras, comes in. That's where panorama is. That's where different things come on. We're seeing more and more of the software because, actually, of mobile photography, where cameras are doing in camera HDR high dynamic range imagery either combining brackets or doing stuff with tone mapping we're seeing, especially the pocket cameras that are stitching panoramas in camera. So in a few years, this whole thing is gonna continue to change. The concept is is that we're gonna be doing it on site. And I think What? That's one of the greatest things in this case of shooting something like this where you're shooting straight into the sun, straight away from the sun. Um, and shooting, obviously, you know, probably this is close to a degree panel. This isn't a little teeny island. Actually, it is a little teeny island that I'm on, but you could never get that in the view. It looks like now it's a little teeny Gilligan's island over in Tonga, but it's actually not a small of a little island, but the fact that on my hip I can have a camera that's gonna shoot this time an 18 megapixel panorama. This was taken with the built in camera app on the IPhone, which, by the way, now goes up to 28 megapixels, which is freaky cool, and it also does automatic exposure throughout the entire process. at 30 frames a second. It's updating the exposure 30 times a second while it does that. So these sorts of things where you're shooting into the sun and away from the sun. Actually, this one probably wasn't shot with that because of this very challenging situation of shooting into the sun. This may have been done with, um, Photosynth, Microsoft's photo sent, which is one of the only APS that allows you to shoot different exposures during the entire panorama process and then blends thes different exposures together. We'll talk about that about different ways of doing that again. Ridiculously fun things in Tonga, waterproof housings. One of the things we're gonna do after we take a break and we start talking about shooting is I've got probably 500 different photography gadgets in here and again that goes back to our things. Why this immediacy is so cool. I've got so many different battery packs, lenses, tele photos. We have our new olo cliff telephoto in here, which I know you guys are interested in tripods, multiple waterproof cases, everything else. The fact that you now can actually do your photography out of a fanny pack more than you ever want, I would never even carry this. This has got more information, more stuff than I never do. Bell share my Christmas bag of toys with you after a break, but one of those things is a waterproof case. Okay, whether you're shooting with an SLR or point and shoot or cell phone camera, it's another area photography that a lot of people have not played with. We don't want to get our cameras went. Now it's There's no reason the world between an IPhone or a mobile phone case or point and shoot camera like the Olympus TG ones, the tough guys TG two or awesome little cameras. You should be playing around with more challenging conditions, like water or sand or snow or whatever. Still, in Tonga, another one of those stitch panorama is This is actually using auto stitch auto stitches Really nice because it's separate images that you can stitch later it again it maxes out at 80 megapixels, but the quality is great. It really matches things like photo shops, photo merge, really incredible high quality. The thing with this one is I was able to go in, and each one of those images, optimized it, do some total correction and then stitch it after the fact. So you can stitch, tweak and do all sorts of things and then, um, stitch after the fact and, uh, some monochromatic I love shooting portrait. So I don't know if we're going to shoot a portrait this morning, but this particular effect is being done with mono view. My interview is one of the most delicious little monochromatic APS out there, and I think I've got some other samples from it, and here we all love. Our little retro effects are antique ing effects will call them instagram effects. It's almost become a verb now because Instagram kind of started with these nice little built in filters. But I love it because of the removal from the super clean digital age. That's one of the problems with having a camera that always shoes perfectly sharp, clean, colorful pictures. At some point, we get overloaded with clean, colorful, sharp contrast to pictures and the analog, the texture, what it called the patina. The aging of it actually has a nice layer to it. I think that's why we're drawn to it. Also, as soon as you add something like this to an image, it becomes an interpretation, and we immediately know that somebody did something to it. Somebody made decisions. That this image is gonna be more potent or more powerful or more memorable or more emotional because of our patina is because of our manipulations on it. And again, that's one of the things that I think I love about the's abs and the different adjustments. Another Montague probably starting off in snap see for snap seed from was with Nick, bought by Google. Amazing Amazing Application will spend a good deal of time on that, especially some hidden features that you may not know ways of working with it. It really is one of the top acts out there. This was a couple weeks ago when I was teaching the painting class for Creative Live in San Francisco and again Love Street Photography. You'll notice I don't do a lot of people. That's actually one of the great things that about the IPhone, because it's not intrusive, you know, you could be shooting, you know, you can actually pretend to be listening to music and, you know, be shooting away and being all sorts of invasive in people's private space. But it's great people of photographers have been shooting, you know, street photography and these intimate moments with strangers forever. And there's probably no better tool than this. A little tip, in case I forget later on your little headphone jack. The Apple headphone jacks, as you probably know, is a shutter release. It's the one that allows you to do that. So it's a great one. If you are doing this sort of thing and playing with your headset is, actually you're taking pictures. The other thing I do is I used time lapse. Well, I'll just have it shooting away since it's so easy. So I don't even have to touch the phone. It's just sitting there in my hand and it's shooting away. So I want to get, you know, funky with shooting people on the subway. I don't even have to touch anything. So time lapse. I use that not for time lapse, but also for street photography and, of course, variations on a theme. And again, these are Mona View, which I just again, I love how it works. Um, last week, this couple days ago, it photoshopped world again using one of you after snap seed changing depth of field is all sorts of tilt shift effects were going to get into some rial Mawr controlled. Sheltered at the field is if you're shooting with a more open F stop. There's an app called big lens, which is really nice. That's a great selecting. That's another thing. The masking capabilities. Again, This is a Las Vegas just a couple days ago. Again, taking advantage of our panorama is this right? Here is probably 3 60 panel. You can see that I purposely left these elements on the lower left and upper right, Um, those sorts of things you can. There are some abs, touch, retouch where you can do retouching. But this will bring up another subject. Is that as much as we love the IPhone? Let's not forget that just because they were shot in the IPhone doesn't mean that we can't use photo shop. There are purists, remember, they're the same people who killed digital photographers, burned them alive at the stake because it wasn't pure. Now we are the IPhone purists who are burning the photo shoppers at the stake because how dare you take an IPhone or Android picture and bringing into photo shop. If you can't do it in the IPhone, it's not. You know, we're in this to make beautiful images and tell wonderful stories. So things like this, you know, content aware fill is just so ridiculously fantastic at extending the edges. Especially if something like a panorama I won't crop that out. If that's part of the story again, that I don't even know how or why. If I would have shot that in, uh, my big boy camera I love this. Um, remember this area of the middle of the of the Strip? One of the things that I like about this is that this gentleman here who's walking through the scene is obviously is the same person. And if you follow somebody and that we may remind me when we get to the studio, I want one of you guys to dance for me, but not dance, but toe walk around while you do a pan. Oh, because if you've never seen a person tor into pieces while doing a pan, Oh, it's really cool. We could do it outside and bright light, where to cash shadows each one of the tourney pieces cast its own thorn shadow piece. Yeah, I'll see if I can find some sales of that. But anyway, so again, this is something a different way. A completely way, different way of telling the story. You see the strip here? You've got that side street again. I probably would not have gone to the trouble of shooting this with my big boy Camera Brings up another great point. If you did shoot this very quickly, take two seconds shooting. And I found you. Go. Great. This is the money shot. What you gonna do? Well, then you just simply pull out your big boy camera. Your micro 4/3 that told. So hopefully on your hip, right? You've got a little, you know, Olympus pen shooting raw. And, you know, it's also super cool camera. You should be packing both, because if you do get in the moment you go. This is worth Brazilian megapixels. Then it's awful nice to be able to shoot raw and do all that thing. But this is your preview. This is the camera. This is putting the hood over it and going This is gonna work. This is you know, the angels gonna weep over this shot shooting the IPhone, Get the immediacy, do your tweaking of it. Obviously, again, we're pulling out a huge amount of tonal range on this file, and I want this is Las Vegas as well. This was a little teeny fountain, a little little board text fountain. And for me, I surf is my addiction. You know, that's I could've sat at this fountain old day, so that was very cool to play with some of these air. Just, um, funky. I have this one in here. This is also from Vegas. I mentioned the motion blur. Slow shutter camp is great. I don't have the sample here, but one of the things with slow shooting slow shutter in a traditional camera. We're leaving your shutter open for extended period of time. Let's say five or 10 seconds. Well, that's literally impossible with a DSLR. Unless you have what's known as a neutral density filters on top of it, maybe a 10 stop neutral density. In order for you to leave that shutter open for so long to get motion blur again. Because of these freaky cool app developers psychotic will call them where they'll say, Well, I'll imitate motion blur by not leaving it open. It's actually a very short, appropriate exposure time. But then combining them together to imitate a slow shutter is awesome. I can shoot directly into the sun with no neutral density. Do a 12th exposure of the plane, you know, banking as it shifts from west to east. And I'm doing it with my cell phone, something that literally would be impossible to do on on my DSLR or pan owes more palm trees. Sorry about that. Yeah, You're going to get stuck with that official we have. They are adaptions. Adapters are digits. Our little chat skis are IPhone chance keys is what we'll call them that we stick onto it. So here we've got a fish ir olo clip has been around for a long time. Zola clip again being done with a long exposure. So this is just a funky little thing on wet rocks. This is actually being done in a waterproof case. So I've got waves hitting up against my camera with a slow shutter fish. I ah, cell phone. So again, this for the fact that I've got a little waterproof fish. I case in my pocket that I can actually experiment with this again, going allow me to play in ways that I may not have before Macron's will play around with the Macworld. This is probably just a traditional shot again. The IPhone has a great great lands in terms of it's close up capabilities and more palm trees. It's just I only do one event a year, and it's actually a good part of the focus of that is mobile photography that's called creative photography for the soul over on Molokai, with two National Geographic photographers, DeWitt Jones and Ricky Cook. And so in. One of the great things about that is you have to National Geographic photographers who are walking around with an IPhone, you know, shooting their their heads off and to be able to do things like this. This actually isn't obey at all. This is actually 100 and 80 degree panorama, and I'm looking straight out to sea. So the fact that I'm getting a completely different story by looking down the coast and then up the coast and I ended up with the bay is getting another story that I probably would not have taken with my DSLR again. You're gonna see a lot of heavily Melipilla manipulated images. A lot of them are more subtle, but subtle is not my I'm not known for subtle. Okay, these this was gonna burn out your retina. By the end of the two days, your eyes will be bleeding from fluorescent colors. But again, back to street photography. It's amazing how much you can freeze Action. This was Shot is part of light workshops. Click. California Photo Festival is actually coming up next month. Highly recommended. Central California, Halle, Victoria Smith Run light workshops dot com. Awesome. I teach there as well and ah so love that there are gaps that fake things. This is not a flooded situation that's a fake foreground with fake reflections. But again, if you want to mess with people's minds, you have those sorts of things at your disposal. These were taken at Palm Beach Photographic Center, another place where I teach I've pornography, Palm Beach Photographic Center, and they have their event every year. Photo fusion F o T O Photo fusion in January, and I'll probably teaching I photography there as well. Slow shutter cam, this case amusing slow shutter camp and one to get the foreground. But normally, another thing that you can't do talking about mobile versus traditional photography. You can't do a slow shutter exposure unless you have a tripod. There's just no practical way where you're going to get a razor sharp cloud, a razor sharp rock and, ah, you know, five second exposure of waves. You just can't do it unless you're a sneaky, it'll kind of person. You shoot the foreground using something like Sochaux's slow Shutter cam, which will do in just a little bit. And then you shoot another one with your standard app, and then use something like a blender to blend those two different ones together. Razor sharp at the top, motion blurred at the bottom, doing something that we've done in photo shop for a 1,000,000 years. Take two different shots and then blend them to a mask. Blenders, one of the most elegant applications for it. So here, basically with no tripod, I'm able to experiment and do extremely long exposures and still get razor sharp aspects of it simply because I switch between Tuapse and then used 1/3 have to combine the two images so well you'll find that some people are going to use, you know, half a dozen APS on every single image that's at the pain. That's one of the limitations, because at first are APS when Apted. One thing when Apted. Another thing. And we were always switching between APS. So whether that's a feature or a bug, some people love that cross pollination of multiple APS together. It's part of the creative process. It's it's, you know, mixing the oil paint and then using a little imposter in a little pastel when you're doing your stuff because it turns you on or it's the bug like, could you just give me one app that can do the frames and the antique ing and tonal adjustments and all that? That's where things like snaps he'd come in. You know where they have done enough of it to allow for a huge amount of manipulation in one single out. If you're not shooting out of your window on every time you go out on a jet, you know you should be You've seen Julianne cost book window seat. Fantastic. You should also follow Julianne cost on Instagram her work is incredibly beautiful. All of it. Using the Instagram filters varies in one of the most beautiful, stoic sets of photographs I've ever seen. And that's Julian cost on Instagram. They're ones. This right here is, um, camera Plus, which I love. We're gonna be spending time in camera. Plus, it's a great one. But first the image was shot using that slow shutter cam in Grand Central Station. And then this little if you look at it here, you actually have all the little textures of a Polaroid. You know, little Essick sex 70. And then, of course, it also lets you tag it and stuff like that. So framing all these finishing effects is 10 billion finishing effects. We'll see how many would cover. You know, some of them are just terminally cute, and we love term really cute, and I obviously do gimmicky and trendy. But this is an example of, ah, nice framing effect that has a little handwritten gesture in there. They also have a offset frame that's really cool. It has the density bars for an offset lithography with crop marks. Its It's a great one. Um uh, New York. Now we're back in Times Square and something that I normally would not have shot with my big boy. And certainly you'd never see this. These are one of those things where photography allows us to see things that don't exist. The blurring of motion, the freezing of motion and things like these exaggerated fish, I or Panos. This doesn't exist anywhere in the world. This is not what you would experience if you were there. So I'm creating this experience where none existed before. So and that happens a lot with this mobile photographer. You look at a lot of what's being done now, and it doesn't have a connection to the real world. So whether you're how you're shooting is shaping your story that you're telling or your post processing we're coming back in and lay mean collage in A lot of people do a lot of collage work on the IPhone, the IPad, Androids. I don't do as much compositing and Clausing because the masking capabilities, even though we have some great ones like Photoshopped touch, which will be covering us Well, um, I find that kind of a lot of masking. I prefer in a new environment like Photoshopped