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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 34-38: Sep 4-8

By Chris Maverick on September 28, 2010 11:41 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I know I promised that I'd catch up soon on my 365 Cellphone pics. Well, I lied. But don't feel too bad. I'm nearly two months behind on posting my daily self-portraits on flickr. But I'm working on it. So here we go, let's try to get some of the pics from earlier in September posted.

On September 4th, I once again wanted to illustrate the idea of taking photos of everyday objects and trying to present them as art. Like a modern-day Dadaist, the cellphone photographer should always be on the lookout for "found art."

By varying the angle and exposure of the shot to present a view of the object that we are not used to, we can draw attention to the image. Then by getting close to the object, filling the frame and paying careful attention to the texture and feel of the object we can force the viewer to look at it in a new way.

This image was heavily post-processed in Adobe Photoshop. It was sharpened more than normal in order to really make the texture of the worn metal really come through. After that, a soft-light layer was added with a diffuse glow filter applied to the image in order to over expose the background and allow the parking meter in foreground to pop.


The September 5th photo is much more of a classic photography image than most of what I've been featuring in here lately. This is a classic landscape shot, presented as a portrait aspect ratio in order to make it standout a little from the norm.

The image was post processed into black and white to make the texture and tones really stand out. The water of the stream I am particularly proud of as it the black tone it takes on is very murky tone.

The key to this photo, and what made me snap it in the first place, was the lighting. The shot is actually taken in a small tunnel. The light is peaking through the trees and just barely entering the mouth of the tunnel where I am standing. Enough ambience to get the shot, but leave the water with that dark and murky look. 


On September 6th, I was working on rebuilding my main computer and had been using an old laptop as my backup. I set it down for a moment to do something else and was struck by the perspective of the keyboard out of the corner of my eye.

I've found that a lot of my favorite cellphone shots utilize extreme perspective. Given the lack of a means of varying the zoom on the iphone's camera, it's probably true that I gravitate towards these kinds of shots. 

Some small sharpening was done in post for this photo to really simulate a crisp macro photography feel, but most of the strength of the photo comes from simply getting very close to time subject and filling the frame.


Perspective was again the critical key to the photo for September 7th. I'd actually been meaning to do a shot like this for a while.

Skyscraper photography with a cellphone is actually quite deceptively simple. The fixed lens is wide enough that perspective of large objects is automatically exaggerated. 

The key here is to get as close to the building as possible. This shot was actually taken from across the street because getting any closer I would not have been able to fit the entire building in the shot.

The iPhone 3GS allows the user to focus on an arbitrary part of the frame by clicking on it. Here I focused on the base of the building and then shot up allowing the focus to fall off as the building trailed off into the distance. The lines on the side of building converge as it gets higher and much like other perspective tricks I've used during this project, this causes a sense of movement throughout the picture.


September 8th's photo is anothere attempt at a classic photography example.

This glass was shot under studio hotlights. The key light was set to camera right pointing down at the glass with a smaller fill light to camera left to maintain a sense of form on the opposite side of the glass. This fill light and a small back light pointing at the glass from behind allow the glass to maintain separation from the background. 

The iPhone was focused on the glare on glass. This has a nice side-effect with the iPhone's camera. The sensor knows to stop the aperture down to attempt to not overexpose the point of focus. Consequently, the black backdrop becomes underexposed which leads to a solid black fill effect. Without the back light, background would be even darker, but allowing a little light to seep into the upper corner of the frame creates a more natural effect.


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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 30-33: Aug 30-Sep 3

By Chris Maverick on September 19, 2010 1:50 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Ok, so I've fallen behind with posting the 365 cellphone pics but that doesn't mean that I have stopped taking them. Quite the opposite. I've been busy taking them in a variety of locations and it just took me a while to get them ready. 

Night photography presents a special challenge with cellphone. Like everything else we've discussed, when the sensor lacks enough light to get a proper exposure, it compensates automatically by adjusting the shutter length and aperture. This typically results in blurred images, but when you anticipate this, you can use it to your advantage for taking stunning long exposure shots. 

It took several shots on a busy nighttime street to get this photo to work out exactly how I wanted it. Basically I just kept waiting for cars to drive past and triggered the camera as they were entering the frame. The trick is to time the shot so that the camera starts recording as the car is entering the frame, as there is a delay between the fire button press and that actual activation of the digital shutter. With some practice however, this can be timed quite well. 

As an additional tip. Since the length of the shutter can't be directly controlled, it can artifically be manipulated by finding a location with enough background ambient lighting to give the camera the sense that the scene is not as dark as it really is. The lights from this grocery store provided that.


While the lens of most cellphones isn't truly a macro lens, everyday objects can be seen from new and interesting lights by getting very close to them. The nice thing about this sort of photography is that you can gain greater camera stability by simply resting the cellphone on the same surface that the object is resting on, in this case a kitchen counter.

The key here is that since the camera has no macro lens you have to keep it far enough away from the object to actually get it to focus. To simulate an actual zoom effect, crops may be made in post production. 

As always, varying the angle of the object being photographed, rather than shooting it straight on can increase interest in the photo. Similarly, cropping the frame so that the object extends beyond it increases it's sense of mass.


Sometimes a subject will be pre-lit and a lot of your work as a photographer is simply done for you. That was the case at this diner. The deserts in the display case are already lit to draw attention to them and entice the restaurant patron into buying a slice. As such. you merely need to find an interesting angle to showcase them for your shot.

It certainly isn't perfect studio lighting, as display lighting isn't generally as concerned with things such as fill lighting, however, you do get a nice even level of light across all the of pies and the result is a photo that certainly gets the point across to the viewer.


Cellphones are perfect for capturing things such as graffiti and murals and other urban art. Typically there is a vast array of color in the scene already and the urban grit is often highlighted by the shortcomings of the impoverished camera sensor.

If the photo is taken at a well lit time of day, things like aperture and shutter speed aren't really an issue. The primary difficulty for this shot was trying to get it while avoiding being run down by rush hour traffic. 

Plan your shot ahead of time. Get used to visualizing how you want it to appear in your mind and where you need to be in order to acquire the proper framing. Once you have your photo set in your head, you can move into place and make simple quick adjustments to get the shot.


This landscape illustrates how good standard photography techniques can be applied to cellphone photography for similar results.

If subjects are backlit and properly exposed for the sky, then the subjects themselves tend to appear in silhouette since there isn't enough light information coming from the front to allow details to appear. 

As such, the key to a nice backlit scene such as this is to wait til exactly the right time of day. Right as the sun sets. Typically photographers will use "Golden Hour" to take wonderful portraits as the light temperature at the hour just before sunset (and just after sunrise) is perfect for capturing skin tones. As such, you can use this dusk lighting to capture some great portraits of human subjects and end your shooting day with a silhouetted shadow landscape such as this one.
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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 25-29: Aug 25-29

By Chris Maverick on August 31, 2010 2:12 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Time for another batch of cell phone pics.

Using a cellphone for sports photography is difficult, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The first key is to get as close to the action as possible. This is not always easy. With traditional cameras, this could be accomplished by using a zoom lens, but since we don't generally have that option with a cellphone, the only recourse is to actually physically move as close to game as you can. If you have the option of standing on the field of play, as I'm doing here on the August 25th shot, this works best, but obviously that isn't always possible. Shots that occur closer to the sideline will typically be more engaging than a long shot as the action is that much more immediate. 

A second thing to keep in mind is that the thing that makes sports photography interesting is action. Try to capture your subjects in motion. Players jumping through the air. Balls in mid flight. Freezing action in times will give your photos a sense of motion that will attract a viewer and make their eyes move through the frame.


Sometimes the most interesting photography isn't representational. An intriguing image can be created merely by capturing an everyday object in a manner it isn't normally seen, thus creating an abstract piece. 

With conventional photography this might be done with a macro lens closing in on a subject closer than would normally be seen, but as this isn't possible with a cellphone, again we simulate it by simply getting as close to the subject as possible while still allowing the camera to focus. 

On the August 26th shot, we are looking at the taillight of a car. At this distance we can see the prisms that the light reflects through in exquisite detail as well as see the coloring of the light in vibrant detail. 


As we've discussed before, repetition is often pleasing to the eye of the viewer. Given a repeating pattern that varies slightly will draw the user in as he subconsciously tries to process the scene. This is one of the key secrets to architectural photography.

The August 27th shot was taken from the top floor balcony of a hotel looking across the atrium at other balconies on the other side. Several base photography techniques are being used here. Obviosuly repetition is the first. However, I've also taken care to make sure that the corner of the hotel falls right on the one-third line, emphasizing the perspective of the left wall and drawing the viewer back further into the frame.

Second, the ever expanding mass of greenery slopes downward and caused movement in the photo, as though we were viewing a cascading waterfall rolling through the shot.


I decided to feature repetition again on August 28th. This time we are looking at a collection of flags hanging in the Baltimore Convention Center. The varying colors and designs of the flags create a much more chaotic scene than the total tonal repetition of the building architecture on the 27th, but the similar shape and hang as well, as the clean line and regular spacing nonetheless create a repetitive pattern that allows the viewer to be drawn in to the scene.


Way back on Day 4, we discussed child photography and I used a common trick of shooting the subject from above, thus increasing the diminutive nature of the model and creating a since of childlike innocence in the photo. 

For August 29th, I decided to try a different approach. Contrasting with the previous portrait, for this one I chose to get down at eye level of the subject, an 18 month old girl. This puts the viewer on equal footing with the model and allows us to experience the world as she sees it. a mass of legs and pelvises moving around her barely taking notice. 

Getting close to the subject also allowed the camera to focus tighly on her, while letting the background elements (people walking by) fall out of the camera's depth of field. This, paired with the motion blur from the speed at which the background subjects are moving reduces them further into background elements and calls more attention to the primary subject of the little girl.

It also helps that she is just unbelievably cute and adorable. 
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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 19-24: Aug 19-24

By Chris Maverick on August 26, 2010 3:20 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
A bunch of new pics to talk about today.

The first is kind of a request pic. My friend Vic asked me about using a cellphone to take pictures of drinks in bars. Bar photography creates a very obvious problem. Bars are poorly lit and since cellphones lack flashes to create additional light there's not a whole lot that can be done about that. The best we can hope for in situations like this is to get as clear a picture as possible and try to make it interesting other ways.

What I've done on for the August 19th shot is put both drinks we ordered, a margarita and a sangria very close to each other and gotten as close to them as I could with the phone so that I could fill the frame. I rested my elbows on the table and the iPhone against my chin in order to steady the camera as much as I could and tried to take the image at a striking angle to kind of draw the viewer in towards the drinks. Even with this, a fair amount of digital noise was created due to the camera going into a very high ISO mode in order to contend with the darkness of the room. This can be minimized somewhat by with a denoising filter pass in Photoshop, but there's still a fair amount of digital grain. This simply has to be dealt with and accepted.


For August 20th, I decided to take a shot that was uniquely Pittsburgh. A closed down steel mill here in town is now the site of a large shopping center. While most of the plant has long since been cleared out in the name of stores, restaurants and a movie theater, a line of smoke stacks has been left standing and restored as a monument to the city.

The nice thing about the smokestacks is that as a monument, they are prelit. Even late at night, the spot lights at it's base provide plenty of light to get an elegant picture of the structure. The camera in the iPhone has a nice feature of automatic exposure compensation. While you can't directly control the exposure of the image, it does try to evaluate light based on the point of focus of the image. In this case, I told the phone to focus on the lights at the base of the scene, this meant that it stopped down the exposure to the point where ambient light in the sky was minimized and appears as pitch black in the final image, save for the glow of the moon above, which in and of itself adds a pleasing element to the negative space of the image.


Originally I had a different shot planned for August 21st, but while I was out driving, I happened upon this scene. I wanted to shoot it not only because I thought it made an interesting shot, but also because it illustrates a very important point about the nature of cellphone photography.

An SUV was speeding along a local city road, not far from my home, missed a turn and rolled and crashed. At least one person was killed and others were injured. The police and fire departments were called in to the scene. While this was tragic, it definitely calls into view the main reason I wanted to do this project i the first place. With the ubiquity of cellphone cameras, we are ALL photographers now. Photojournalists ready to capture an event as it happens. While in the past a reporter would have to be dispatched to the scene of an accident when it happened, today a first hand account of an event can be documented by just about any passerby. 


On August 22nd, I was taking a walk through the woods near my fiancee's parent's home. I came across a stack of firewood that her father has precut and left under a tree. For some reason the arrangement of the deadwood against the upright trees spoke to me and I decided that dichotomy would make an interesting shot. 

The main challenge here was that it was a particularly bright day, and even with the point based exposure compensation I mentioned earlier, there was no way without artificial lighting to light the scene as evenly as I might have wanted to in a controlled environment. 

What I opted for instead was to expose the wood and trees, my subjects, correctly and let the background of the shot overexpose and fall off into white. This has the nice effect of drawing attention away from the cluttered background of the street, even though the hotpot created there is somewhat distracting in and of it self. The point being, photography, like most styles of art, is a game of making choices. Sometimes the most ideal situation will not present itself and so we make do with what we can.


I had not intended to do two nature shots two days in a row, however the rainy season is just beginning in my area and we had a nice downpour that I noticed was creating a very vibrant wet look on the leaves in my yard. The August 23rd shot was taken on the steps that lead from my back patio to my swimming pool.

SInce there's no way to really do macro photography with the iPhone, getting the correct distance for something like this is of key importance. As we've discussed in the past, there's no optical zoom in the phone and since digital zoom will not give us the effect we want, care must be taken to move the fixed lens as close as you can to get the texture of the leaves but far enough away to allow it to actually focus. Furthermore you want to make sure you maintain a pleasing composition as well. In this particular shot, I decided to frame the image so that the the edges of the stairs lined up naturally on the one third lines of the frame. The top most step is smaller than the others, so I angled things to make the bottommost step seem a little larger than the others. This creates a ladder effect that has the sense of "pulling" the viewer through the picture.

This is is as much a study in post processing as it is in the composition of nature photography. In order to really bring out the vibrant greens and the wet look of the pavement, I took the image into photoshop, applied my usual level of unsharp mask sharpening and then duplicated the layer over itself as a semi-transparent (about 40%) hard light layer. This had the effect of lighting the highlights while darkening the shadows as well as adding quite a bit of saturation to the greens of the image. I find the effect rather peaceful and ethereal.


From natural to industrial. I wanted that contrast so specifically went out looking for something more hard and man-made for the August 24th shot.

The nice thing about this electrical generator is it's use of angles. Not only of the generator itself (which is actually subdued and in the background of this particular shot that I chose) but in what really stood out for me, the elaborate lattice work of a simple chain-link fence. Repetition can frequently be pleasing to the eye and causes the viewer to pay more attention to pattern and texture. In effect, this stops being a photo of a scene and becomes a photo of an idea. 

This idea is further pushed by the text of the sign, much like we've seen on previous images. In this case, the sign is on the other side of the fence which it warning the the reader not to cross. Since the latticework of the fence fills the entire frame the boundary between us and the "perceived subject" (the generator) becomes even more prevalent.
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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 15-18: Aug 15-18

By Chris Maverick on August 20, 2010 3:21 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I've said before that the real key to successful photography is having a camera with you at all times and as such, this is the largest bonus to the cellphone camera. Always being able to reach in your pocket and snap a shot of anything that you happen to see in any situation. This article on the photofocus blog talks about this very thing.

My shot from August 15th is an experiment in sign photography, something that a lot of people seem particularly into of late. A lot of sign photography I've seen is straight on, either an image of the sign cropped to be exactly the sign, or pulled back so you can see what the sign is attached to. I wanted to do something different. In specific, I wanted to play with the idea of getting close to the subject and the idea of using interesting angles. Filling the frame is one of the most basic ways to turn the mundane into striking art. While at distance this would simply be a picture of a sign on the side of a dumpster, when we get close we can now inspect the texture of the metal. The angles of the edges of the sign contrast with the perspective of the bin itself (a trick I've found myself using a lot to increase the dynamism of cell phone shots). And there's a subtle bit of humor contrasting the message of the sign with it's own condition. 

For August 16th, I decided to return once again to model photography for the daily shot. I was doing another Zivity shoot, this time with traveling model, Lady Sutton. For this shoot we were going for a very summery series full of soft portraits and natural lighting. It was shot in a small woodshed in the back of an overgrown yard with a very blue sky behind us. For the actual shots with the dSLR, I had a speedlitht flash, with a Gary Fong LightSphere diffuser to produce fill light on the models face, but I lacked the ability to fire that in synchronization for the cellphone shot. So instead I had to rely on all natural lighting for this one. If I'd had an assistant, I could have used a reflector to redirect the natural light back at the model. Instead, I simply had her position her head so that the light fell evenly on her face and the shadows fell into her dark hair in a pleasing manner. There is a slight bit of overexposure on the photo, particularly on the models hand, where there was just too much white from her dress and hotspot occurred. This is one of the deficiencies of shooting with the cellphone, but in my mind, not the end of the world. 

Another thing of note on this particular image is the posing of the model. I wanted an intimate but natural portrait, so I framed her close and had her tilt her head slightly to draw more attention to her face. I wanted to see her eyes but I also wanted to avoid the artificial feeling of having her looking directly into the camera, so I have her looking slightly out of the frame. This combined with the fact that she's partially hiding behind the door gives the appearance that she's interacting with someone out of frame. It is a natural pose that calls more attention to how pretty she is.


For August 17th, I again turned to found object photography. This is a shot of a simple fire hydrant. The PhotoFocus article talks about using interesting angles on everyday subjects, getting higher or lower than eye-level to give a unique perspective on how an everyday item is seen. However with a fire hydrant, we are almost always looking down at it. So by getting low and taking a shot of the hydrant at eye level, we see it in a unique perspective. Given the mundaneness of a subject like this, I tried to keep follow more strct basic photography rules in order to draw the viewer in. Of note is that the hydrant lines up DIRECTLY on a verticle one-third line. The horizontal sidewalk in the distance also lands on a one-third line. Thus there's an intersection right at the top of the hydrant (where the both shadows and highlights meet) which immediately draws the eyes attention. In addition, I chose an angle where the hydrant has lines pointing inward, while the sidewalks lines point outward, thus using contrasting perspective to further draw the viewer into the photo. 

This particular hydrant is under a tree which provides a nice bit of shade and interesting shadow patterns, while allowing just enough light to hit the hydrant in order to make it an interesting subject. The shadows on the ground, mixed with it's dull green and gray color tones play against the bright yellow and green of the hydrant to really allow the subject to pop from the photo.

And speaking of perspective and playing with lines, we have the photo from August 18th. A tricky thing to do with photography in general and cellphone photography in specific is to create engaging abstract images. That's what I was attempting to do here. I decided to start with a very simple idea. Texture. In particular the texture of a random Pittsburgh street. I knew the cracks in the asphalt would look interesting playing with the grain of the substance itself, however that didn't seem to be quite enough to really make a good picture. But then I found a street with a pair of yellow divider lines painted along it and that gave me this idea. Since we had two parallel lines, running next to each other, I let them cleave the photo in two, going directly directly down the center of the frame, allowing the perspective to create the illusion that they're getting closer as they move on, and will eventually meet (which they do not of course) somewhere off frame. While the divider lines create a sense of symmetry in the photo, the randomness of the cracks break this symmetry and add chaos to the image.

365 Cellphone Pics, Day 14: Aug 14

By Chris Maverick on August 19, 2010 7:07 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Ok, really I do need to get better about catching up with posting these. 

Today I have another shot from a photoshoot. I kind of like doing this, as it's really my photography specialty and I like seeing what I can do with a more limited camera. 

This portrait was taken while I was doing a photoshoot for Zivity with Sarah. The nice thing about already having a shoot is that I already have everything set up. The model is ready, the setting is good, and I know how I'm working with lighting.

But this particular shot isn't really about lighting. It's more about mood. We were going for something spooky and gothic. The idea of a young girl performing a ritual of witchcraft. 

At first glance, it seems I broke a few base photography rules to get this the way I wanted. Sarah isn't really lined up where she should be according to the rule of thirds. Her forehead is clipped, her fingers are clipped. But if you actually look at the pictures, it's not really a photo of her. She's the backdrop. The photo is of the fire. This is obviously a nonstandard thing to do for a portrait, but the hope with this photo is to illustrate how to perform tricks like this. If I were using a dSLR, I would have use a shallower depth of field to blur sarah put a little more and really make the fire pop out, but since I lacked that kind of control, I got the focus as sharp as I could on the wood, flame and smoke. Then we use positioning to focus the viewers attention where we want it. When all this is done, while you're aware of the model in the back, the attention of the viewer should be drawn to the true subject, the flame.
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365 Cellphone Pics, Day 13: Aug 13

By Chris Maverick on August 16, 2010 7:45 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Since it's impossible to "really zoom" on most cell phone cameras as I've discussed before, one thing that can be fun to do is take advantage of the wide angle look of them for panoramic views. When given enough light, and enough patience with and understanding of that light by the photographer, some stunning wide angle shots can be produced.

To get this one, I stood on my roof of my house and looked across at the graveyard on the hill behind me. The clouds were incredibly fluffy and full and I knew that it would make a good picture. The main key to this was to be patient and wait for the camera in the cell phone to adjust to the scene and get the correct white balance and exposure before engaging the shutter. Once the scene began to look correct on the screen I braced the phone for steadiness and pressed the shutter button.

While I sharpen most cell phone photos during post processing, that wasn't as necessary here. A small amount was done to make the grass stand out, but clouds are supposed to be fuzzy and fluffy so I allowed the low sharpness of the camera to enhance this effect.

365 Cellphone Pics, Day 12: Aug 12

By Chris Maverick on August 16, 2010 2:04 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Well, it certainly didn't take long for me to fall behind on posting these. I'm going to try to be better about that now. But I haven't missed a day, so lets try to fix that.

My fiancee loves plants. And by loves, I mean she loves buying them and then making it my responsibility to take care of them. This one finally just started sprouting flowers today, which, by the way happens to be her birthday, so i figured it'd be the perfect day to take a picture of it. 

A nice thing to try when photographing flora fauna is isolating one color to make the picture pop. Since there was only one flower sprouting so far, this was in fact really easy. The pink color looks very vibrant against the green background of the rest of the plant, where it might have been lost and not as shocking in a setting with other flowers. The shot was taken entirely in natural light on my front porch. Since I can't control the aperture of a cellphone camera to adjust the depth of field, I focused on the closest part of the flower to me and let as much of the background fall off as I could then digitally darkened the exposure in Photoshop to make it even less noticeable. 

365 Cellphone Pics, Day 11: Aug 11

By Chris Maverick on August 13, 2010 1:45 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
But for the obvious lack of resolution, the cellphone camera may be the best thing that's ever happened to street photography. The true photographer knows that you should never be without your camera ever. Pick it up when you get out of bed and carry it with you every where you go. To work, to lunch, to the store, to the gym, to the bathroom. You never knew when you were going to get that one killer shot. Of course, cameras can be kind of unwieldy, and so unless you were truly dedicated to the craft that might be kind of a problem.

But now, in 2010, in the United States of America, if you're not carrying around a cellphone with a built in camera, then YOU are the weirdo. In many ways, the cell phone really does bring photography to the masses. In some ways, I guess that's what this project is really about.

And if you're going to have a camera on you at all times, then really, why not take up street photography as a hobby. Interesting scenes are all around you. It just takes opening your eyes and choosing the moment. The best thing is, in the old days, if you pulled your camera out and stood around on the street corner taking pictures of people they tended to get annoyed at you. But I've found that if you're standing on a busy street today, there's probably more people talking or texting on their phones than not. You can hold up an iPhone and snap away and no one gives you a second thought.

Of course, as I stated, the quality of these cameras isn't quite up to par with what we'd probably like for truly brilliant street photography, but as always, the megapixel race is on and we'll catch eventually. On top of that, cellphone cameras are starting to get better lenses and focusing mechanisms. In the meantime, using an impoverished camera can lend some very interesting results, especially if basic rules of composition are followed ahead of time and good post processing is used after the fact. Afterall, in a truly candid situation, one wouldn't have the time to really be adjusting settings on a dSLR anyway. The keys are to be aware where your light source is and compose accordingly. Also, get used to making quick decisions and no how long it takes your camera to respond once the shutter button is clicked. There are no second chances to recapture that truly unique moment, so you have to get it right the first time.

In post processing I added a little more fill light on the front subject to make her pop from the shot a little better than the lesser subjects behind her. I really felt that she conveyed a nice sense of motion and "on-the-go" as she's striding confidently while talking on her phone at the same time. Then, I obviously reprocessed the shot in black and white to add a more editorial feel to it. Finally, I cropped the photo to have the subject in the bottom right hand corner while the perspective of the road and sidewalk she's walking down trails off in the upper left to really give her a sense of movement. 

I had a lot of fun with this style and it's one I hope to revisit for other shots in this project.

365 Cellphone Pics, Day 10: Aug 10

By Chris Maverick on August 11, 2010 12:24 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
This is one of those photos that I was really looking forward to. I love cityscape photography. Really, most of it is rather simplistic, but I just always find the view of city lights from a higher vantage point breathtaking.

The main tricks to make this really work are choosing the right time of day and the correct angle. It needs to be dark enough that the city is lit up very bright by contrast and you need to be high enough to get a large panoramic view, while not being so far away that the details are rendered unrecognizable. The city of Pittsburgh is set up well for this, as we have a mountain directly across the river from downtown Pittsburgh. I simply waited for it to get dark and then drove up to a park that's located there.

I used a similar trick to the lowlight technique I used in the bar to take this photo. I braced my elbows on a banister and held the iPhone steady as I could to point it out over the city at night. When it's this dark the shutter of the phone is quite slow and so camera shake is a real issue. Another technique is to actually set the hone on an object to keep it very steady, but my vantage point was such that I needed to actually lift the camera somewhere in order to make this work.

In the interest of doing something a little different today, I am also including a photo taken moments later from the same vantage point using my dSLR (a Canon 5DmkII in the is case) to take the same shot for comparisson. With manual control over the settings, the dSLR photo was taken with a 24-105mm zoom lens, pulled all the way out to 24mm using ISO 100. The aperture was set at ƒ/8.0 and the shutter slowed all the way down to 30 seconds. I attached the camera to a tripod and to minimize camera shake even further I set the self-timer to a 2 second delay so I could move away from the camera after firing. Even still at 30 seconds of exposure, there's some small amount of visible shake from wind and from passersby walking and vibrating the ground the tripod was resting on. I could have taken the shot with a faster shutterspeed and aperature but doing it this way exposes how crucial it is to get a very steady camera for a shot like this. Even more so on a cellphone, which lacks the image stabilization mechanism of many modern cameras. 


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