Over the last six months on Open Salon I have posted a number of "art" photographs taken with a cell phone, and in general I've received some nice comments on them. I don't see myself as having any particular talent for photography, and I think that anyone can take a reasonably interesting photograph with a cell phone.
I'm not a professional photographer. I'm not trying to sell anything or hang anything in a museum. The effect I'm striving for is when someone says "that's not bad for a cell phone." Also, being lazy I don't want to spent much time on any particular photo.
In what follows I will reveal the "secrets" of how to take an Ok "art" photograph with a cell phone. Everything that follows has been done with an iPhone and the minimal tools available on a Macbook computer.
1. Composition -- when considering what to photograph look for strong images with a combination of textures, angles, curves. Here's a photo I took yesterday morning:
So we have a couple of different textures, some lines and shapes going on here. It's not very interesting yet, but I think we have something to work with.
2. Decide what kind of photo you have. The above photo is actually a color photo, but is a color photo of a gray exterior wall. So I'm going to lose the color and make it a pure black and white photo. In the Mac Preview application I select Tools - Image Correction, and set the saturation to zero.
There wasn't much color to begin with, so this image isn't much different from the first.
3. Black and white photos are often more interesting with a wide exposure range, going from areas of the photo that are totally black to those that are so white that little detail remains. The upper part of the photo will eventually give me my black when I adjust the contrast. The middle part of the photo will give me the light part, which I get by adjusting the exposure of the photo:
Notice that the middle part of the photo is a lot brighter. It almost looks like it "shines." But adjusting the exposure hasn't had nearly as much effect on the upper left corner.
4. Now we're going to adjust the contrast in order to get a wider separation of values:
Note that when applying contrast, we don't want to "wash out" the white areas of the photo. We want to retain a little detail.
5. Now we can make the photo maybe a little more interesting by adjusting the brightness:
We reduce the brightness just a little bit in order to give us a kind of shadow effect in the upper left. This doesn't have much effect on the brighter part of the photo, and now the bright part almost seems to "glow," which I think is kind of an interesting effect.
6. One last thing -- the bottom part of the photo isn't very interesting to me. It's just a bumch of all of the same thing. So I'm going to crop the bottom, and I think that will make the rest of the image a little stronger. Again with the Mac Preview application, this is Tools - Select Tool, and then Tools - Crop:
7. Here are the "before and after" shots:
So this is not something that's going to hang in a museum. But I think most people would say "not bad for a cell phone." Any anyone with a cell phone and minimal photo editing tools can do the same thing. I hope this is helpful to any aspiring "cell phone photographers."
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Comments
Of course, with the early cell phone camera images there wasn't much information to work with. You couldn't crop much, because otherwise the remaining image would be about as big as a postage stamp.
The iPhone image has more information to work with. Also, the phone synchronizes with the Macbook, so that using the editing tools in the Macbook is quite fast and easy. The final version of the photo in this post would only take about 5 minutes, from start to finish.
But I think you too quickly diminish your own processes, results and art a bit by saying "...anyone with a cell phone...can do the same thing."
I agree with Koakuma that this is well taught.
You have an excellent eye for composition and that is essential to make any image interesting. I also like your use of textures and muted colors.
So then the issue is "can everyone be an artist?"
I believe that potentially anyone can learn to see things differently. That was certainly my experience. Inspired by a photographer friend, I got into black and white photography in my early 30s using a medium format camera. Before that, I had never done anything more than take snapshots, with all of the defects that you typically associate with snapshots.
As part of my interest in b&w photography, I studied books of photos by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor White, and all the other usual suspects. Within about 6 months I was taking some pretty good photos -- nothing that was going to be exhibited in the National Gallery, but photos that were of good amateur quality and that had interesting compositions.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, but it's my belief that most anyone can develop a photographer's "eye." It is a matter of study and practice. At first, most of the photos you do are crap. But after a while you start to improve. We can't all be Ansel Adams or Minor White, but with a little effort we can all make great photographs, some of which will rise to the level of "art." Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but that's what I think.
I have a Mac at home and I have Windows for Mac on it. I am going to look up Picassa and see if I can do anything interesting with it. Thanks for all the great tips!! I really like the photo you ended up with. Cheers!
I used to be a "picture for the sake of pictures" kind of guy, until I was introduced to photography as a creative form. Sometimes, I don't do any post-processing other than adjusting autolevels, other times I do more invasive adjustments to try and arrive at what my mind saw as opposed to my eye.
You are one of those inner-eye types, mishima. I can tell from your shots, you really do see things differently. That's an important component to taking an awesome photo.
~Candace