Your iPhone is all you need to create outstanding photographs.
Review coming soon: The iPhone Photography School / iPhone Academy by Emil Pakarklis.
iPhone Photography School
My Camera Phone and Me
by contributing Scotland-based artist, Douglas Brown
As an Edinburgh Black Cab driver I travel to and around my beautiful city on a daily basis. I’m always on the look out, very aware of my surroundings, you have to be in my line of work, especially for other road users including cyclists, pot holes and general not-paying-attention-pedestrians. You could say I have an eye for the unexpected.
The joys of my day job though mean my eyes are not only focused on the happenings that could cost me money, but also on what’s happening around me that could earn me some extra money.
My main passion out-with the day job is Art, Design and Photography – iPhone photography and digital art to be exact. Guess what, I can do both using my iPhone!
I always upgrade my iPhone, mainly every two years with the exception of my recent upgrade from an 11 Pro Max to the 12 Pro Max. Why? Simple, the iPhone 12 Pro Max offers significant camera improvement and especially the new ProRaw feature which allows me to shoot and create RAW files.
The benefit of shooting in RAW is at least 10 times better than shooting in JPEG (.jpg), especially when editing to not only create great sellable photos, but also to create great sellable digital art. With RAW you can edit, save, edit, save as many times as you wish and your original shot will not lose any of its original resolution.
My Camera iPhone and I have a special relationship that I value. I didn’t buy it for the phone, any cheap cellphone can make a phone call. I buy and upgrade my cellphone to take and create beautiful art, photographs and digital art. Most of the offerings on my website, Two Ice Art & Design (https://twoiceartanddesign.pixels.com) have at some stage passed through the many editing apps that I use to create my offerings. The upload from the latest iPhones to my website is always in 4k, which then delivers to the printers of my products the best and highly acceptable image quality so Fine Art America can deliver those museum quality canvas prints that they promise to you, the buyer.
Link to: Edinburgh and Beyond in Color
Link to: Color & Abstracts
Thank you for taking the time to read. Hopefully you will see the value of what you have in your pocket – and when that special moment happens that catches your eye – you will with confidence be able to pull that cellphone out and capture the moment.
Regards,
Douglas Brown
Two Ice Art & Design
Featured Breakfast with Camera at Hand
Berries and Grain bring a healthy start to your day.
Maybe not the breakfast of champions but these blueberries with shredded wheat in milk photograph was actually featured in two theme-specific Art Groups at Fine Art America.
One group featuring my breakfast composition is “Pretty in Pink Blue or Purple.” The other was in a group with a wider focus, called “Images That Excite You.”
Once again, the saying holds true that the “best camera to have is the one you have with you.” The natural, indirect lighting coming in the window to the left brought this simple (still life?) arrangement of fresh blueberries to my attention. The light and composition surely would have changed had I taken time to fetch my “more-pro-style” camera gear, set it up and try to capture this shot. The focus on the large, perfect blueberry and the soft bokeh of the background frosted mini-wheats could not have been rendered any better (even with a few more pixels in the sensor) than with my iPhone 12. The image, even though cropped, will yield a beautiful Kitchen Décor piece up to 24″ x 30″ in size. I also looks interesting (wonderful) as a throw pillow for a kitchen chair or even printed on a coffee mug for that hot cup of breakfast coffee.
Or, just imagine how challenging this image might be on a jigsaw puzzle. That is, if you are a true fan of “different” puzzle photographs.
Link to view all products and/or shop: https://bill.pixels.com/featured/berries-and-grain-bill-swartwout-photography.html
Please feel free to leave a comment below about your experiences with your cell phone camera for creating photographic art.
Is moving up to an iPhone 12 really Necessary?
There are, indeed, some cool features but they may not all be needed.
Of course it is great to have all possible tools available. But just about everything in photography, as most things in life, is a trade-off.
Post response…to an art thread with iPhone 12 Pro sample shots. It was noted by the photographer that he was still awaiting a tripod he had ordered…
Indeed, Sir, those are quite impressive. There is a lot of nice detail in those 12MP images. They will easily make quality prints up to (my favorite size) 36″x24″ and even a bit larger. I looked at them with the (green box) loupe and didn’t see motion blur – so you might not really “need” that tripod for daytime/outdoor shots.
I will do an upgrade of my old iPhone 6s. Probably be a bit too busy this week but I will pull the trigger soon. I won’t be moving up to the 12 level but may move to an SE or XR. I can plop down $399 and get a new SE on my account and have no further payments – and still have my 6s as a backup.
I am also going to do some test shots with it my phone “clamped” to a tripod, use the self-timer as a vibration-free shutter release – and compare shots between tripod and hand-held. There was a time, albeit a long time ago, that I could hand-hold a film camera (35mm w normal lens) at 1/15 second with no perceptible motion blur. I’ve been watching the displayed shutter speeds (Pro Camera) and see that most shots are over 1/200 sec with my 6s.
Well that plan has been changed. See the new iPhone 12 here: LINK.
Piano Keys One Octave Plus
Available as Prints, Jigsaw Puzzles, Face Masks and more
The keys in this photograph make up just over an octave of musical tones on a piano.
The black keys are the “sharp” or “flat” sound of the keys next to which they are located. Twelve tones make up one complete octave – which then repeats in several locations (seven plus) on a full-size piano keyboard, which contains 88 keys in total.
The pair of black keys separate the C, D and E tones, while the trio of black keys divide the F G, A and B notes (tones).
The subject piano, in this image, is a Baldwin Spinet Piano built in the 1980’s.
Image created in an iPhone6 and post-processed with Photoshop Elements and Nik Collection filters by DXO Software.
Shopping Link: https://bill.pixels.com/featured/an-octave-plus-of-piano-keys-bill-swartwout-photography.html