Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Mobile Photography Controversy - My take on it

There is an ongoing trend in photography in which photographers are resistant to the mobile photography trend. A friend recently made the following bold statement: "Instagram isn't real photography." This struck me as rather narrow minded in some sense. I mean I understand that a huge percentage of photos uploaded from mobile devices are subjects including self-portraits in bathroom mirrors and cats sleeping on laps, but there is a large amount of art being produced from today's mobile devices.

I am an artist first and foremost. Photography happens to be one of the mediums I happen to work in. I have said for years, it's not the camera that makes an image. It is the photographer. The better the photographer knows his or her tools, including the camera and processing software, the better the image can be. I am not saying the better camera, I am saying the better the photographer knows how to use the camera. Now I am not here to say that I would take my phone to photograph a wedding, but I do say that I art can be made via the phone.

It wasn't but a 13 years ago that the top level professional level DSLR, a Nikon D1, only sported 2.7 megapixels (MP). In 2003 the Nikon D2h DSLR was released in 2003 with a whopping 4.MP censor. Today's smart phones generally come with a minimum of 5MP and up to 8MP. Nokia is releasing at 41MP cell phone camera. 41MP! Now, I am not saying that megapixels makes the camera, because they don't. A  100MP camera in the hands of a bad photographer will just create larger version of bad images. The below photograph was taken with a 5MP point and shoot and I was able to successfully make a 16"x20" print from this 5MP digital image. Megapixels don't matter. So mobile phone photography can't be measured by megapixels.

Sunet_silouhette

Photoshop has been around for years. Photoshop-like processing has been around since the invention of the darkroom. Just like more megapixels in a camera, Photoshop won't make a bad photo better. Photoshop can make a great image special. Photoshop can be used to apply filters, color enhancements, textures and frames using plug-ins and actions. Software available for mobile devices like Instagram,  Pixlr-o-matic and hipstamatic are nothing more that Photoshop-like plug-ins and actions. So disparaging mobile photography for its push button processing when it is no different than Photoshop's push button capabilities is like telling a painter he can paint with a certain brush. They are just tools to be used to the artist's discretion.

It is not the camera, it is photographer.  Another thing I believe is that the best camera you have is the one that is with you. I can't take my DSLR with me everywhere I go. It simply isn't practical. But my phone fits in my shirt or jeans pocket without any inconvenience save a small bulge. If I my DLSR with me I use it, 99% of the time. The 1% of the time that I might not use it is cases like the image below, where it was raining (2.5 inches fell that day) and I was simply wandering around at the coast. I wasn't going to carry my DSLR in that weather and risk the heavy rain destroying a lens or even my DSLR body. I pulled my phone out and captured the shot I wanted and put it away. I was able to capture the image I did because I knew how to use my camera on my phone to get the result I wanted.

20110213-2011-02-12_16-48-07_452

Instagram is a social media application, not a lot different than Twitter for Facebook. It allows people to share their lives through images rather than 140 characters. While many people use Instagram as it was intended, many others, like myself, also use it, or in some cases exclusively use it to promote their work. I use it as a way to share with others what I am doing as well as share and sell my Fine Art photography via instacanvas.

Next, I am going to talk about the mobile camera apps that I use to capture and process my phone images. I use the default camera that comes with the droid. I also use an application called Pro HDR Camera which is available in the Google Play market. These are used to capture the base images I used for the my photography on the mobile platform. The seagulls image above was shot using the default android camera. The below image was shot using the Pro HDR Camera and processed using Pixlr-o-matic.

Hdr_00006_1_-_tonyangrydim
This isn't much different than the HDR image below shot with my DSLR and processed in Photomatix and Lightroom.

20120528-_dsc1300and8more
For my post processing I use two different applications primarily, which is again done on my phone. The first is an application called Pixlr-o-matic from Autodesk. It is a free download from Google Play. Pixlr-o-matic allows for three different post processing tools to be done to an image. The first is a color adjustment layer which provides dozens of options. The second is a texture layer which again provides for dozens of options. The third is a framing layer, which again provides dozens of more options. Altogether on a single post processing pass, there are over two million possible combinations. Pixlr-o-matic can also save full-res images. All of this for free. To add to this, once I have saved the image I can open the saved image and process it again to gain even processing options. Below are samples of Pixlr-o-matic processed images,  all processed in my camera. Pixlr-o-matic is also available for Windows as a download at http://pixlr.com/o-matic/air/.

The above images are no different than an image shot with a DSLR and processed in Photoshop. These are art, not photo journalism.  Below are similar artist examples of images shot in a DSLR and processed in Photoshop.

Again I am not promoting a cell phone camera as a tool for shooting a wedding or sporting event. You can think what you want to about Mobile Photography, but if you honestly believe your phone's camera can't get the job done under normal and even some abnormal conditions,  you might be letting a closed mind prevent you from getting the most from photography experience.

 

You can follow me on Twitter @monkeypaw2u and on Instagram @creativemonkeystudios and my fine art prints can be purchased at http://instacanv.as/creativemonkeystudios or by contacting me via email.

 

Until next time happy clicking.