a brief guide to iPhoneography, part II

Posted by marne on May 13, 2011 in applesauce, photograph | 11 comments

Are you ready for more iPhoneography stuff? I thought I'd tell you about some more apps and show you what you can do with them, and then at the end I'll share a few links to some iPhone photographers to get you inspired. 

You probably have the Hipstamatic app, right? I think it's a lot of fun and I get every new lens and film and flash as soon as they come out. The unpredictablitiy is part of its charm, and I like that. But. I think it can be over used. Seeing photo after photo with the same sort of greenish tinge gets boring. I tend to think of it as a second camera if I'm out and about and taking lots of pictures. I'll do mostly regular photos and then take a few with my Hipstamatic app, and every now and then I'll end up with something that I really love, like this picture of my family, watching a bike race last summer:

I think it can also be used effectively for a series of related photos, although I haven't been organized to do anything like that yet :o) 

A couple Hipstamatic tips: if you shake your phone, the app will randomize your lens, film, and flash, which is a fun way to try out different combinations without any effort. Also, if you look through your album and find a photo that you particularly like, you can tap it and then, on the bar that appears across the bottom of the screen, tap the little camera with a gear icon and you can change the camera settings to match the ones used in that photo. The other nice thing is that you can order prints. I will get around to doing that one of these days and let you know how they are, I've heard good things!

The funny thing is, the same people made another app called Swankolab, and they seem to have forgotten about it, which is a little sad, because I love it. Swankolab is like a darkroom on your phone. You chose a photo from your camera roll, and then mix up the various chemicals and develop your picture. You can create formulas out of different chemical combinations and save them to re-use. And the order in which you mix the chemicals can make a difference! The picture at the top and the one below were both processed with Swankolab using a formula I came up with and call Crisp Sepia (if you want to try it out: Jerry's Developer, Grizzle Fix, Vinny's BL04 are the chemicals). 

Not only do you end up with some really nice effects, the app itself is really well-designed, you can tell they put a lot of thought into it, with the bubbling chemical sound effects and the developer tray which you can shake and watch your photo slowly appear as it processes. Here's another formula I made, called Pale Antique (SwankoDev A19, Larry's Developer):

And that brings me to another app, which is pretty new, called Diptic. I plan to use this regularly, I hope you don't mind. It's very simple, it's just a nice way to make little collages of related photos. It can save at high resolutions (the photo above was saved at 2592×2592), so I bet they would even print nicely and be great for scrapbooking. 

Okay, one last silly fun app that I need to play with some more: Tiny Planets! What does it do? It turns your picture into a tiny planet, of course! I don't have a good example, but there is a whole flickr group, so go there and look. 

Oh, and I did want to briefly mention Instagram, if you're using it, please feel free to follow me, and I'll follow you back (I'm heylucy, of course)! I didn't think I needed yet another social networking app, and I don't post a ton, but it really is a lot of fun, so join in! Just think, if you had been following me, you would have gotten to see a picture of my feet and other exciting happenings in my life (okay, I am really boring, maybe you should follow some other people instead). 

 Okay, here are some iphoneography sites that I have bookmarked that I think are good for inspiration:

• iPhoneography.com is the place to go for all the latest about photo apps, and there are often slideshows from budding iPhone photographers. Lots of great info!
• Life in Lo-fi is another good site for app news. 
• iPhoneographer E. Caves
• iPhoneogenic
• iPhone Film Lab
• iPhoneography Central
• Deb McLean is a professional photographer, but for a little while she was doing occasional iPhone photo posts on her blog. Really lovely stuff there. 

It's pretty amazing just what you can do with a camera on a phone, so get out there and take yourself some beautiful photos!