How iPhone changed the way I think, pt 2

Last time I have mentioned 10 cool free apps for iPhone. Today I would like to show you:

• How mobile, tiny cameras change a way you think,
• How I use photo-editing apps to create interesting shots,
• How to use an iPhone (or any smartphone) as a learning tool.

There are always people within any group who strain for technical perfection, some of them try so hard they completely forget what they were up to in the first place. When I first grabbed a camera, I was thinking that perfect = good. My way of thinking about photography and art as a whole changed many times but recently it has been quite stable, and it tells me that often perfect = boring.

Grabbing photos by an iPhone is far from perfect, heck, it’s even far from good when you look too close. First thing you need to do is forget about single pixels and concentrate on the impact of you pictures. This tells us a lot about our photography and makes us think out of our usual box…

The picture on the top was taken by fooling around with my phone. I saw really cool patterns on the floor and thought they would make cool shape if smudged in a right way. I took 10 photos moving iPhone in different directions and speeds and here it is, awesome circular smudge. I used Mill Color application, first I oversaturated and added a bit contrast by going up with gain and down with lift. Gamma function sets your middle point so basically it works exactly as levels in your photoshop! Then, just to check out I desaturated the pic, I liked both and thought they would look good side by side. Lets look at another shot:

Many strong colors on these covers were way too distracting so I decided to turn it black and white. On the margin, I’m much more into monochromatic photos when it comes to little, iPhone camera. I used the lift function to add lots of blacks making the patterns pop up. You can create these effect with almost any photo app for iPhone. Just remember to be creative, look around, there is always something to take photos of.

Learning

Smartphones are an awesome way to learn new things. They are your phones basically so you have them with you almost anywhere. This is a huge advantage. You don’t need to carry anything else!

As I recommended in my last post, there is a free app called Study Flash. Its a great tool to learn new words, phrases or even concepts. Lets assume you are in the new job and it has very specific lingo. You would eventually learn all the phrases but why not make it faster?

After running the app, click on the plus button on the lower left corner. You will see a screen where you can name your new card set. I chose Work lingo. Then click on your new set, you will see front and back. On the front you would either put the phrase or the definition. I rather have words on front and def. on back. You can add as many cards as you want. First version of the app had problems when you wrote too much, but newest ver. was stable even with 30 cards, 10 long words each.

I hope this will help you a bit. I had fun writing this little journal for you. I’m finally after my exam so I will be back to some serious photography really soon. Tune up for new sessions next week!