Mobile Photography - final thoughts

The best camera is the one that you always have on you. Nicer, more expensive cameras may take higher-quality shots, but if you can capture everything you see with the phone in your pocket, your iPhone may be a better camera overall. With the success of third party apps and the App Store, the iPhone has become the center of a world of mobile photography. Flickr, and other similar sites, now say that the most popular camera used to upload photos to its site is the iPhone. It's so simple to whip our your phone (that you're probably already texting on) to snap a quick photo of whatever is in front of you.

Most of my photo experience comes from a 20+ year old Canon film camera passed to me from my dad. I own a great set of lenses and love using the camera but don't find time to work with it while in college. I recently considered investing in a high-quality DSLR, but I decided that I couldn't justify spending that much money on a camera when I already have a phone with two cameras and thousands of available photo apps that cost a buck or two. There are so many apps that do almost anything you can dream about doing with photographs on your phone. Looking at the iTunes App Store photography section, there currently are more than 4423 paid applications listed for sale (and thousands more free ones).

In my previous blog posts, I discussed five mobile photography applications that I love using on my iPhone. With these apps (for which I only paid $4 combined), I can produce so many fantastic images right on my phone, whereas I could spend hundreds of dollars on a DSLR and more on a professional editing program such as Aperture. The camera of the future is the smartphone, as people are buying them up in masses. With the increasing number of smartphones being sold, developers are developing better and better applications to suit every user's needs. The low starting point for app price (99 cents) means that people will buy tons of apps since they're so inexpensive. It is predicted that mobile application marketplaces will account for $3.9 billion in revenue in 2011, with the Apple App Store grossing 76% of that with $2.91 billion.

Mobile photography is more than just photography - it encompasses an entire ecosystem of hardware, software, and creativity. I have always loved photography for the artistic aspect, which led me to pursue black and white film photography in high school. Now, with little time to work in dark rooms and not enough money to purchase a new camera, I use what I have to continue pursuing my passion. I find myself firing up apps on my phone all the time to take quick shots when I'm out with my friends. I love how fast and easy it is for me to take a picture then go back to what I was doing. Or, if I have more time, I'll use some of the filtering or editing apps to spice up previous photos. I find it funny that I never open up the standard camera app on my phone anymore - the more artsy ones like Hipstamatic are what I go for almost exclusively.

As technology evolves, so does photography. What used to be a time-consuming hobby transformed with the digital world and has become something that anyone can do with relatively inexpensive hardware. I'm excited to see the future of hardware and software - apps are what currently drive the marketplace and look to continue this trend in the future.

For now, I'll leave you with a quick shot I took visiting my friend's dorm recently - I'm not sure I agree with the card, but I couldn't resist snapping a photo with Hipstamatic.

Photosynth - instant panoramas

Photosynth is a panorama creation app from Microsoft that puts together spectacular images right on your iPhone. The app stitches together as many photos as you take in any direction (including up and down) and gives you an instant, interactive panorama. Taking photos is easy - you take the first then move in any direction and the app automatically takes another photo, lined up with the first. You can spin in a circle and do this to produce a 360 degree shot in less than a minute.

Once you decide to stop taking photos, Photosynth uses on-device processing to stitch the images together and create one photograph. When you view your previously taken shots, you can use your finger to move around in the world like you are standing right where the panorama was taken. The feeling of being able to look left, right, up, and down makes me think of Google Street View, where you can do the exact same thing. Thinking about it, Google Street View must use a very similar technology to create interactive images of all the streets in the country.

It astounds me that the iPhone that fits in my pocket is capable of putting together photographs to create interactive panoramas. In high school we would always have big panoramic pictures taken our of classes, but they had to use special, most likely expensive cameras to do so. Now, I can pull out my phone and do it on the fly. Most point and shoots and DSLRs can't even do this. Mobile photography has its limitations, but there are also many ways in which it exceeds traditional photography. Photosynth shines as a great example of the capabilities of mobile photography.

Color Splash - iPhone finger painting

Color Splash lets you convert your photos to black and white while keeping objects you choose in color. This gives your photos a dramatic look and creates striking images by drawing the viewers' attention to the colored areas. A nice contrast is made by selectively turning your image into some colored areas and other black and white areas. This app takes longer to learn and master than others, but it lets you make amazing photographs right on your phone. I put in a little time to figure things out and can now quickly turn a photo around with this app. Here are images that I have created using Color Splash.

The app uses the touchscreen in a very intuitive way - you use your finger to paint over parts that you want to keep in color. The method reminds me of the finger painting I did as a young child. While this may seem like a crude method, you can zoom in on photos and get details down to the pixel if you want to.

What's more, Color Splash makes it easy to differentiate between what you have painted with your finger and what you have left black and white by changing the colored portion red. This helps with dark photos that contain color but don't contain sharp edges. The app also lets you have multiple projects going at the same time, so you can work on a photo then come back to it later to touch it up at your convenience. Most other mobile photography apps only allow you to work with one photo at a time, so Color Splash gets this part right and means you can work at your own speed, whether or not you'll finish in the time you have available.

When I first got my iPhone, Color Splash caught my eye with the sample images that it was marketed with, and it hasn't disappointed me at all. I love showing friends the photos that I create, and they are always amazed that I produce them solely on my phone. Like FX Photo Studio, this app always creative photographers to do so much on the go without the need for a computer. Of course, professional photo editing programs have the ability to do what app more, but I doubt any of them are as simple, convenient, and intuitive as Color Splash.

FX Photo Studio - mobile image editor

FX Photo Studio is a much more full-featured image editor than the previous two photo apps I have discussed. The app, which can either take photos from the device camera or load from the photo library, allows you to crop, change contrast, rotate, and perform other elementary photo editing processes right on your iPhone. What it does best is offer hundreds of photo manipulations that filter your photos, provide borders, or do other tasks to improve your images.

FX Photo Studio is what I'll run if I want to work with photos that I already have in my library. The app offers hundreds of different effects to apply to your photos, and it can be tough work going through them all and previewing your photo. What I love doing is hitting the "random" button and letting the app choose effects by itself. It takes multiple attempts, usually, but in this way I have produced really great photos. Below is one of my favorite images that I have created in FX Photo Studio.

The app does well to give the user so many effects to use to manipulate their photos and quickly share them by the countless ways an iPhone can share photographs. Full-featured image editors on computers are expensive, difficult to learn, time-consuming, and require you to be at your desk. Apps such as this and mobile photography, as a whole, allow you to do all of this wherever you can take your iPhone. Some people may criticize FX Photo Studio for not containing enough content to make it a worthwhile place to edit photos, but considering the limitations of the hardware, I think the app does a great job providing a convenient way to work with photos on the go.

Instagram - photo filters with friends

Similar to Hipstamatic in end product, Instagram is another iPhone photo app that lets you apply filters to create unique images. You are offered a choice of filters after you take a photo, and you can look through them all until you find the one you want to add. With this process, taking a quick succession of photos with the app is not possible, but you can create great images that have the same retro feeling as Hipstamatic. Instagram takes more time to reach the end product after a picture is taken, but it offers you more choice and previews of every photo with different filters, which some people may like. Here are some photos that I have taken with Instagram.

What really sets Instagram apart from other mobile photography apps is the addition of profiles and friends. When you launch the app, you create a user profile and have the ability to "friend" other users, creating relationships similar to Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Then, whenever you launch the app, the first screen that comes up has a feed of all your friends' photos and descriptions or locations that they added. Doing this adds a social aspect to photography, which really sets this app apart from others. Mobile photography isn't just about taking photos to have for yourself, but it allows you to share what you're capturing with others and lets you see what your friends find interesting. Social networking and media have become essential to the lives of young Americans, and it's no coincidence that social photography has also become big.

Besides seeing your friends' photos, Instagram offers a cool feature that lets you view the most popular Instagram photos from across the world. You can search through pages and pages of amazing, beautiful photos taken with the app. When I take the moment to look through these, I am always shocked at the quality of photographs that people have taken. It really goes to show that even the iPhone, with an inferior camera, can produce images that rival professional cameras at first glance. Instagram is a great example of mobile photography that pulls in a large base of users by being free then creates its own social network of photographers who want to share what they capture.

Hipstamatic - a retro camera for the future

One of my favorite iPhone apps is Hipstamatic - an app that turns your decent iPhone camera into a retro camera with tons of options. Instead of using the standard photo application that comes on the iPhone, I find myself starting up Hipstamatic more often than not to shoot photos on a whim. The app aims to return to a more analog world of photography where things are unpredictable and often come out much different than you would expect.

On startup, you see the "front" of your Hipstamatic camera, showing you which lens you currently have equipped. The "camera" has a look of a plastic toy camera of the past. If you swipe left and right on the lens, you can switch between a bunch of cool, retro lenses that all produce different effects. You can also switch the type of film you are using (producing different borders on your pictures) and you can change the camera body to other plastic-looking colors.

When you flip to the back, you see a small viewfinder, a flash charge-up slider, and a big yellow button to take photos. With all the options (and additional items available for purchase), Hipstamatic gives users so many ways to express themselves through photos. The countless number of combinations of lenses, film, and flashes will let users explore the app to find the type of photo that they truly love. Personally, I have found a setting that I use as a default, and I think it makes all my photos look much better than standard ones. What follows is four of the images I have taken with Hipstamatic.

What gives this app the edge is it's ease of use and its customizability. I bought the app for under two dollars and have so many options to make my photos more artsy and retro. What's more, when you take a photo, the app adds the filter right away so you don't have to worry about choosing that after. You can snap away a bunch of photos in a row and not be burdened with filter selection like competing apps have.

When compared to the standard iPhone application, this app creates photos that are much more appealing to the eye. Even compared to nicer digital cameras and DSLRs, Hipstamatic turns your iPhone into something that creates art - not just photographs. I love using the app and having great photos right away. With a nicer digital camera, I could take photos then edit them and apply filters with my computer, but that requires so much more time and effort. With mobile photography, I can take these photos then immediately share them via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other options. Hipstamatic is a quirky app that transforms your iPhone into a retro photo shooting machine.

Mobile Photography - an overview

Photography has moved beyond the DSLR, point-and-shoot, and film realm into the mobile world. Yes, these forms are all mobile, but none are as plentiful and accessible as mobile photography. You have to plan to carry your camera with you, but you always have your phone in your pocket or in your hand. What's more, mobile photography exceeds the idea of cameras in your phone - what you can do with photos that you take makes this new type of art a truly exciting concept. Looking at my iPhone screen, I have a folder devoted to apps that use the phone's camera. My phone even has two cameras that I can use for these apps. In the next week, I am going to explore the capabilities and limits of five of the mobile photography apps that I have. For now, here is a collection of photos that I have taken exploring mobile photography.

Apps

Hipstamatic

Instagram

PhotoStudio

ColorSplash

Photosynth

Twitter, Blogger, or Facebook?

Which social media site should I use today? When I look across my bookmark bar, I see a row of links that I could easily use to put thoughts onto the Internet. From left to right, I have Twitter, Blogger, then Facebook. I frequent all three of these sites, yet I contribute to them in much different ways. Now - after using all three as mediums of communication - where will I go to write what I want to say?

When I was a freshman in high school, I remember hearing my 18-year-old brother talk about a “face book” he used at his college. I took the meaning literally and thought of a book of faces or pictures. As my friends started to create profiles, I stayed out of the loop. I didn’t need a Facebook. Reluctantly, after my junior year of high school, I joined the site and have used it ever since. Today, I use Facebook to network and stay connected with friends. I see myself as more of a consumer of information than a contributor, so I seldom post on Facebook and keep my information relatively private.

Near the end of high school, my brother introduced me to the world of Twitter. He and his friends had started using the site extensively, and I decided to create an account. In the past two years, I have only written 37 tweets. Most of these are written when I am in a new and exciting place or when I have something random to say - so random that I don’t want to associate it with my name on Facebook. I have 19 followers, and I would guess that only about eight or ten of them actually ever read any of my tweets.

And last but not least, I made a Blogger account earlier this year. So far, I have only written four blog posts - all for the same class. To me, writing on my blog offers me much more freedom than what I post on Facebook or Twitter. I have been writing posts about class topics, but I can see myself using Blogger as a place to write for the sake of writing. I do not feel comfortable posting something lengthy and personal onto Facebook, and Twitter is limited to 140 characters (how much depth can you get with that?). Blogger gives me more room to explore my writing.

When it comes down to it, which site I choose depends on my purpose for writing. If I want to throw out a short, random thought, I will head to Twitter and compose a tweet. If I have something interesting or important to say to a friend of a group of friends, I will jump onto Facebook and write a status or wall post. But, if I actually want to write something longer or say something meaningful and personal, I will use Blogger. I kind of like the fact that soon, my blog will receive very few visits. I’ll be able to write for myself. And although anyone can easily go onto my blog and read my posts, it will be a rare occurrence. I’ll be happy to have a completely public place for my writing - but one that remains relatively private. My views of social networking have changed through the past month. How will you use social media after experimenting with so many different forms?

iGaming

iPhone gaming (let’s call it iGaming) is not your typical gaming. When I talk about iGaming, I mean the new age of video games. These are the ones that are on your iPod, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, or other mobile device. For traditional video games, you need an entertainment center with a television, speakers, gaming console, controllers, cables, and a couch. There is a big capital investment with an Xbox or a Playstation - I can admit that I spent over $1000 on a video game system when I was younger. For iGaming, all you need is what’s already in your pocket.

Accessibility differentiates iGames with more traditional video games. There are two levels of accessibility that I am referring to here. First, accessing the required hardware to play iGames is much easier than playing on a console or computer. Everyone and their mother has an iPod or a smartphone. Once you have one, all you need to do to play a game is open the App Store and hit download. Many of the games are free, and the other ones usually cost 99 cents.

Why do I game? It’s in my pocket! When I have nothing to do, I instinctively reach for my iPhone. I’ll check my email, messages, and Facebook, but flicking through my home screens, I come to my gaming page. This page contains nothing but games. I need folders to fit all of them on one page. Looking at the bottom, I even have two different versions of Angry Birds. (I promise I am not an addict). It’s so easy play a few levels of Angry Birds while sitting on a bus. Or, when I’m bored in lecture, I can whip out my iPhone and choose from almost twenty games to play instantly. Also important, I can play games whether I have two hours or two minutes. Most iGames are not as involved as traditional video games, and you can quickly put them down then pick them back up again whenever you need.

Modern gaming takes advantage of social networking to draw players in. One feature that Apple implemented on its iDevices is Game Center, which tracks your progress in games and compares it to that of your friends and the public. Adding a social aspect to iGaming, the ability to connect with your friends and compete works well. During winter break, my friend and I competed for the top score in Angry Birds. It was rewarding to check my iPhone and see that I edged out my friend’s score - at least for the time being. (He has passed me since then). What I don't understand - how does someone have 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 points?

iGaming has a different purpose from “addicting” games like WoW or Starcraft. I am not the type of person who plays on my iPhone all the time. Many apps go untouched for multiple weeks. I iGame because it is a way of passing time. Sure, I like sitting around and enjoying nature. But when it comes down to it, if I have a few minutes to spare, I’ll fling some birds at fat green pigs. Why do you game?

Why do we tweet?

Why do we use Twitter? We send out 140 character messages for the world to read - they’re even shorter than SMS messages that we use on cellphones. Yet unlike Facebook, Twitter lacks so many features. People compare Twitter’s functionality to that of status updates on Facebook. And Facebook is built upon so many more features (profiles, walls, photos, chat, etc.). So why in the world do we tweet? #whydowetweet

Twitter is based on short spurts of words sent out by individuals to the general public. By default, every tweet shows up on the Twitter public timeline for anyone with Internet access to see. This approach to privacy sits in contrast to that of Facebook. Privacy is an opt-out option that you have to change in the settings if you want to control who sees your tweets. Even with such settings, Twitter has amassed over 190 million registered users who compose over 65 million tweets a day. #somanytweets 

So what is it about the idea of telling the world what you’re up to in 140 characters that attracts so much popularity? Personally, I have never been an avid Twitter user. In over two years with a Twitter account, I have only written a measly 55 tweets. Most of them are from traveling to new locations and going to concerts. I am not the type of person who puts every thought that pops into my head directly onto Twitter - but those people do exist. There are users who write whatever it is that they’re doing or thinking. Some people must feel the urge to alert the world to their every action or idea. But does anyone actually care about this superfluous data streaming across the Internet? #whocares

With my minimal amount of tweeting, I don’t frequent the Twitter website. When I’m bored, I instinctively go to Facebook. Only when I’m really bored and want to procrastinate do I go onto Twitter and consumer information. I don’t view Twitter as a source for relevant information. Do people spend their time reading through tweets? The trending topics feature of the website seems like a good idea to me - but who wants to read through the tweets of millions of Twitter users, many of which have nothing meaningful to say? I’d much rather go onto a reputable news site and read something that I can trust. #canwetrusttwitter

As Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his article in The New Yorker, Twitter builds a network of weak ties. Relationships in real life are based upon strong, personal connections, but social media allows for people to create a broad network of weaker, impersonal ties. Herein lies the strength of Twitter. You can follow people that you would never talk to you nor even know in the real world. From these connections, information can flow that wouldn’t in a world without Twitter. Without access to Twitter, I would never  know what Rainn Wilson was thinking. With Facebook, Rainn would have to accept my friend request for me to see his information, but Twitter’s one-way following lets people hear what others have to say without the need for a formal relationship. #stalkingallowed

I doubt that I will ever change my ways drastically and tweet more often. As Twitter grows as a service and as a company, it will have to adapt its ways. Google and Facebook continually update their sites and improve their services, and Twitter will undoubtedly have to do this, or perish. The question is: how will Twitter change to better suit its users? #onlytimewilltell

The Mathematics of Facebook

Have you ever wondered why Facebook always shows you what you want to see? The news feed filters out people you never talk to and presents you with info about people you like. Do you know how Facebook does this? Or, when you start typing a name in the search box, do you know how Facebook predicts what you are trying to type? Most people don’t even notice this happening. And that’s what Mark Zuckerburg and his team want. They want you to go onto Facebook and be immersed in the information you see right when you log in. It’s not magic, yet it’s not all that complicated either. All of this can be described by the mathematics of Facebook.


So much of the site’s refinement and smoothness is based on math. When you want to know something, it’s already in front of you. You don’t need to go out and search to find the info that is relevant to you; Facebook does that behind the scenes, using numbers. Everything is based on algorithms. Everything that you do on Facebook is recorded and used to make your experience better. Say you click on your friend’s profile and looked through her photos - Facebook now knows that you want to see information about this person more often than the friend you never talk to. When you post on a wall, or when you chat, or when you send a message (or have any other type of connection on the site), Facebook will know that you want to consume information about this individual.

One of the biggest ways that Facebook knows your true “friends” from your online acquaintances is through photos. Who else is tagged in the photos that you’re tagged in? Or better yet - who is tagged in your profile pictures? Facebook realizes that these people are people that you spend time with (in the real world, off of the internet), and the site uses this knowledge to its advantage.

From The Social Network, Columbia Pictures 2010

Complex mathematical formulas and equations are used by the site to analyze all this data that it collects. As seen in The Social Network, some of the code used for Zuckerburg’s Facesmash website and Facebook are based on algorithms ranking users, preferences and every possible relationship that you have online. Brilliant mathematicians, computer scientists and coders work to invent and continually improve the math that defines what you see on Facebook.

From personal experience, Facebook does an excellent job knowing what its users like and what they do not. The right sidebar of Facebook often contains links to friends’ photo albums and photos related to the page you’re currently looking at. I’ve been with friends who sit there and click through the photo suggestions and then click on the new suggestions and so forth, wasting so much time. The click through percentages of these suggested links must be astronomically higher than any side ads on other websites, like Google.

I love how Facebook is so dependent on mathematics. I am currently studying applied mathematics at UC Berkeley and would kill for the opportunity to work with math at a place such as Facebook. The power of math and the power of Facebook scare me a little, though. I hope Facebook doesn’t know more about my "friends" than I do.