All posts in technology

Boscastle with an iPhone

Boscastle-with-iPhone-450

Three images of Boscastle, Cornwall taken with an iPhone.

When vertical becomes horizontal

Not long back I visited the Lake District, Wast Water to be specific, and wrote a weblog concerning photographing the place with nothing but an iPhone and an App called Pano. I’ve been on my travels again and discovered that Pano also works when you turn it 90° and create vertical panoramic images see above.

Pano stitches images you take with it on the fly merging them into one long photo. If you ignore the landscape mode warning and turn the camera there’s no reason that verticle images can be made instead on horizontal. Why would you want to do that? Well, for aethetic reasons some people may like the long thin image ratio as opposed to short and fat but you may also prefer this method for exposure reasons. Read more…

The iPhone, Best Camera App and Tumblr

I find the iPhone good for abstract snaps

I find the iPhone good for abstract snaps

Recently I have been using my phone as a kind of electronic sketchbook. When I find myself queuing, waiting, standing around or generally not engaged in meaningful activity, like a flasher, I whip it out and make an exposure. The iPhone, whilst being a bit cumbersome to handle, and not very useful in low light, is often the best equipment for the job because it’s the only one I have with me (I still sound like a flasher!). I have found myself taking images that I just wouldn’t with my SLR and 3 bags worth of equipment I tend to lug around with me. Perhaps because it’s less obtrusive and less like a camera and I find myself thinking differently when using it. Hey, those old Apple “Think Different” [sic] ly, adverts have worked on a subconscious level if not a grammatical one.

After the picture has been taken comes the bit I really like. With the use of a few free or very cheap apps I can crop, add filters and borders and upload to the internet, it’s all pretty instant and makes me wonder why I spend so much time in front of Photoshop. I have to recommend tumblr.com as an elegantly designed site I’ve started to use to display just my iPhone pics.

The apps I use are:

For those interested the above pictures were taken whist waiting at Foxton Locks, a bathroom floor, a hotel carpet during conference, a nightclub entrance hall, a heavy metal gig and Art Gallery entrance.

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Flying Hearts from Flying Vs

Flying hearts from flying Vs

Flying hearts from flying Vs and Mirrorball

A couple of photos from last night’s gig where I was trying to find something that was a more soul than heavy metal.

For the first time in a long while I was persuaded to attended a gig, Mastodon at Nottingham’s Rock City. Many years ago I used to live at Rock City sometimes attending rock, alternative and student nights in the same week, so it was nostalgic to visit again.

Rock City is the venue where I first saw Guns ‘n’ Roses, Iggy Pop, Public Enemy, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, amongst others, so I have fond memories. The place did seem a lot smaller than I remembered and they’ve given it a bit of a facelift, not much, a lick of paint here and there but not enough to change the atmosphere which was always pretty good. The carpet may have had a clean, one would hope, but I didn’t check closely it just seemed less sticky, those of you that have ever sat on the carpet will understand that comment. The most bizarre addition, apart from the guy in the toilets selling aftershave (a hard sell when all punters have beards), was the Mock Tudor balcony adornment made of steel plate, very metal. But the overwhelming difference was the number of gadgets and personal technology people were using to text, tweet and take pictures. It seems that since my last gig we don’t experience a concert we record it and collectively file it in the cloud I found at least one Flickr set of the same concert taken with the ubiquitous iPhone this morning. I offer my two iPhone images to the mass that were taken on the night above and maybe I’ll go to another gig before the next leap in technology happens.

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Free studio lighting in your back garden

never work with kids and animals

Free lighting provided by the sun, for everything else there's Mastercard

Equipment used

A high key light (Sun), reflector (table) and dark backdrop (fence). You don’t need fancy equipment and studios, just a keen eye on the weather and an understanding of the available light. Taken in the early afternoon, the sun is quite high and back left. The table here is acting as a reflector and bouncing the sun back up into her face and filling in the shadows. Behind is a fence which has been dropped into deep shadow by the position of the sun.

About the image

I like the way the cat and the girl merge together. They are best friends in real life and often this close, so I might have yelled “hold it there”, but apart from that there was no instructions given or posing required.

Superstar DJ Advert

Superstar DJ Advert

Superstar DJ Advert

Hang the DJ (out the way in a cupboard somewhere)

I found this press advert from way back when the college was offering BTEC courses in DJ Technology. Alas, the course isn’t offered anymore. I don’t know how much its demise has to do with Apple’s iPod, which at about this time was just about to go stratospheric sales-wise. Do people need to learn to DJ anymore? Surely we can all do it with a well crafted iTunes playlist plugged into a PA. I still have my LPs; they’re hidden in boxes in the loft, soon to be joined by my CDs which still reside, in plain view on shelves, in the living room but I think their fate is sealed, as I no longer have a CD player and every song I have is now on the computer.

DJ Hero?

Things do have a habit of coming full circle and I think there may be hope for budding DJs out there; it’s name is DJ Hero. I saw an hilarious advert for this on TV the other day, starring Jay-Z and Eminem (technically both MCs not DJs, but I guess Terminator X won’t shift as many units). Now Guitar Hero I can understand; technology’s answer to shuffling about with a badminton racket pretending to be Angus Young, but DJ Hero? Who ever said? “When I grow up I want to be a DJ just like that fella on Top of the Pops – at the back, in an oversized coat, behind the keyboards, next to amps, with the headphones, fiddling with a gramaphone, trying to look cool.” I hope this doesn’t lead to a room full of fifty somethings attending nostalgia nights air DJ-ing to the scratches from, “Straight out of Compton”, only time will tell.

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