My Phone as a Camera for a Day – Work Day Edition ft. #VSCOcam
Phone photography is here to stay, and not just as a party cam. Many artists use it as a valuable tool. Phone companies are even designing new phones that they admit are cameras that happen to be phones as well [Cameras and Phones taking on new identities]. Now camera companies are venturing into the phone business: Canon takes on phones.
With the rise of phone photography as an accepted and widely practiced form of art photography, I felt inspired to experiment by trying to go full days using my phone as I normally would my Nikon or Canon. Not as easy as you might think. But using my iPhone and VSCOCam I was able to document my average work day. Here is the day I chose: August 7th, 2013.
The first thing I noticed about trying to do this is the speed. I could start with the first thing I see every morning. Since I use my phone as my alarm, I just grabbed it the moment it woke me up and took the first picture: my ceiling and the wall behind my bed featuring a poster of Picasso.
Here is the series of images from one day all shot with my iPhone and edited with #VSCOCam.
As I walk to the cafeteria, they have a rotating gallery wall and I stop to enjoy Emily Manalo Ruiz‘s nautical flags.
Her flags are extremely personal metaphors that I found fascinating and heartbreaking. You should see her portfolio here.
I loved the instancy of the process and felt that it reflected the same feelings a polaroid does. But, much like a polaroid, the phone is limited in what it will allow you to do with metering, exposure, etc. This is where the #vscocam comes in: allowing for editing in exposure, contrast, cropping, etc.
The whole phone photography revolution is an interesting one. With apps like Instagram that essentially made your phone into an homage to film, it’s no wonder companies like VSCO are welcomed with open and eager arms.
VSCOcam doesn’t seem to be competing with Instagram and other photo phone apps, instead it “represents major advancements in mobile photography image processing. Taking what we’ve learned from VSCO Film™, we’ve achieved results previously unattainable on an iPhone.”
Using the newest techniques to move the phone photography revolution further and while looking back with reverence on the old world camera looks of the past, VSCO has created a phone app that changes the game.
Learn more about VSCO, VSCOcam here: http://vsco.co/