July 2011

Dan Burkholder has a book coming out soon on his iPhone photography techniques. In addition to his iPhone fame, he specializes in platinum over gold leaf and pigment over platinum photography.

Listed below are a few of my favorite photography apps. Total cost thus far: just under $50 (a few of them are free). Each app has a website that provides instructions and Dan’s site offers some video tutorials. Here’s the list:

Touch Retouch, Autostitch, Filterstorm, Ezimba, Iris Photo Suite, Layers, Photosize (the one by Danny Goodman), Juxtaposer (really fun), CropForFree, Crop’nFrame, Color Effects, PhotoStudio (logo is a lens in the middle of colorful flower-like petals), Vintage Scene (logo has a pic of Eiffel Tower), PhotoCopier (stylizes photos like various famous artists would). Most of these apps work on the iPad which doubles the size of your palette.
There are also apps that turn your iPhone camera into pretty hip HDR cameras, they are:
Pro HDR, TrueHDR, Bracketmode (need to read directions on that one)
Fun “camera” apps (iPhone only, for now):
Hipstamatic
Cameras (logo is an old Daguerreotype or Brownie camera) This one is free and tells you the history of various cameras and allows you to take a photo in the style of that particular model. Way too cool!
Dan had us use a “capacitative” stylus pen for best artistic flexibility. They sell them at the Apple Store or the better ones are made by Acase or Boxwave (available online for about $10 – $15).
You can transfer your photos to your computer using the Photo Transfer app (www.phototransferapp.com for more info) or the incredible PhotoSync app (which includes transferring videos). PhotoSync (it’s spelled without a space) has made my life so much easier for $1.99.

Flowers For Sale and Spices (below) are examples iPhone photos modified with apps. The photos are each a composite of at least 16 images stitched together with Autostitch and then cropped.

In January, 2011 I had the pleasure of attending Fotofusion at the Palm Beach Photographic Center in West Palm Beach. It was there that I attended a one hour seminar on iPhone artistry given by Dan Burkholder (www.danburkholder.com). Not long after the Fotofusion event I took a three day course given by Dan last February.

“The best camera you have is the one you have with you.” I can’t count how many pro photographers have quoted this to me…

Since the advent of the iPhone 4 I no longer feel it is necessary to carry around a camera to capture the images of events I’d like to remember. Yes, I still bring along a high quality camera when I specifically want to photograph an event, but, for spontaneous image capturing the iPhone 4 has a rather sophisticated built in camera. In addition there are extraordinary apps that facilitate manipulating an image almost as well as Photoshop and other similar photography software. The image below is an example of one of the pieces created with some of these apps.

More on the specifics next time…

INSPIRED By:

Radiolab/WNYC’s Parent Clock segment, Nancy Grows Up:

http://audio.wnyc.org/radiolab/radiolab052907a.mp3

I intend to take on a magnum opus… documenting my children’s growth in small video vignettes similar to the concept about six minutes into the above broadcast. To accomplish this, I am mastering Final Cut Pro Studio software and will begin to sift through the many hours of VHS, VHS-C, and Mini DV tapes taken over the years. I’ve been talking about doing it for ages. Now it’s time to get to it!