iPhotography

Let me start by saying im not sure how I completly feel about this. I'm more of just thinking aloud and hopefully letting you into, what I think is, an obvious future. This has been going on for about a couple years and it's been growing and feeding me into this blog. This has a lot to do with the amazing invention of the iPhone and the fact that it is now a better camera makes things, well, I guess worse. 3mp, better in low light, auto-touch focus (which will most likely show up in our bigger SLRs with live-view) and a couple more things. This is typical for camera phones now a days. My issue has to do with the editing, the post-processing, the "photoshopping" without using photoshop. I mean some of this stuff looks great! Vignetting, selective color, selective focus, b&w, tinting, on and on...

Their are plenty photographers that show, sell, their work for use on the web arent there? Look around, its everywhere and PLENTY of it. The obvious use in advertising, not to mention stock photography. So does the web need 21, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3 even 2mp?? No, it doesn't. Does it need PS or the like? Nope! OK, so how do we usually work? We take our, at least, $1500 camera, our hopefully expensive lens, our hopefully expensive tri-pod, which I think the costs are too much, and take the picture with our wireless remote. Then we bring it in to our $700 piece of software and edit it for hours right? Right. Well, how about this? We take our PHONE out of our pocket, slide and press a few buttons, actually touch the screen of where we want it to focus, compose the shot and click the screen. No shutter, no mirrors, no chip that is bigger than a quarter size of the iPhone. Then we can open the picture in one of many, many different apps that we purchased for probably a few dollars or even FREE and "edit" away in a few minutes. Not to mention being able to post that picture almost whenever you want.

So what does this all mean? Is the, proverbial, writing on the wall? Do some people actually care more about getting their pictures online? Portraits of their kids, senior pictures, headshots and even yes, their weddings onto to their facebook page? A web slideshow? Their blog? Can an iPhone take care of all that too... sure, to a certain point. Will it get better, easier? You bet it will.

The industry is talking more about all this convergence of video. Grant it, it is pretty awesome but I think we need to have more discussions on where this "low-end" type of photography is headed and whats it all means to all of us as professional and amateur photographers.

Right now, we think its pretty damn cool but I hope it doesnt bite us in the rear.

— Aldo

Let me know how YOU feel. Comment or click a reaction.