{"id":4241,"date":"2011-02-02T20:43:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T04:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4241"},"modified":"2011-02-02T20:43:56","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T04:43:56","slug":"fun-with-camera-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/02\/02\/fun-with-camera-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun with camera apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my birthday at the end of December, I got a new iPod Touch<\/a> (iTouch?). I flat out love this little gadget: it has a microphone, which means I’ve been able to use it to Skype<\/a> (with video); to make voice notes on Evernote<\/a>; and to send myself voice memos by email. It also has a camera, and since I always have it on me, I now always have a camera on my walks.<\/p>\n

All you long-time iPhone users can roll your eyes, but since I’m still on a dumb phone, this is as close as I’ll get to mobile (and truly portable) computing. (Without a monthly data plan.)<\/p>\n

I find myself willing to download various apps now, too. Never much for gaming apps, I mostly ignored apps when I was still using my old (“blind”) iTouch. But that has changed now that I have a camera.<\/p>\n

I started with Camera+<\/a> and entered a whole new world of being able to adjust light and exposure on the iTouch camera before ever pressing the shutter. After I take the picture, I can mess around with effects. So<\/span>. much<\/span>. fun<\/span>!<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

The above is a self-portrait (oh yes, these apps and gadgets encourage narcissistic self-regard!) – I’m using Camera+<\/a>‘s “purple haze” effect (after having first adjusted the exposure …toward the light side). \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Of course landscapes aren’t immune to crazy manipulation. The following three photos (also via Camera+<\/a>) are of the cell phone tower at Summit Park<\/a> in Victoria: the concrete tower’s bottom section is illustrated (presumably, this deters taggers), while the top is starkly utilitarian. Here I left the colors unchanged and instead only used Camera+ to manipulate the photo “frame”: it seems to me that this really changed the feel of the scene, without changing any of the colors or effects.<\/p>\n

Alors, regardez<\/em>:<\/p>\n

First, (1) a wider view of the tower’s base in true color, and without<\/em> a fancy frame; followed by (2) a close up of the base and (3) of the tower, again in true color but with fancy frames on (2) and (3):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Here’s the second photo, zooming in on the tower base, with a white frame resonant of the 70s:<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

And finally, the top part of the tower, with a kind of ratty frame in white:<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

I find myself looking at things differently now, with an eye to using the app to capture how the scene is making me feel.<\/p>\n

But wait, there’s more…<\/h2>\n

I also downloaded SynthCam<\/a>, which lets you do shallow depth of field shots and more: use the app to sharpen one small area of what’s in your viewfinder, and the rest is blurred out. This can be interesting if you’re trying to eliminate “noise” – including passing pedestrians or other moving objects from a non-moving subject you’ve focused on.<\/p>\n

So (drumroll…), another narcissistic move – a self-portrait (and since SynthCam<\/a> doesn’t allow flipping the viewfinder, this got tricky: it’s almost impossible to focus on the face, and you end up getting the hand in focus instead):<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

But you get the idea, right? The hand is (more or less) in focus (ok, I was wobbling everywhere<\/em>), while the other objects (in this case the rest of me) is out-of-focus.<\/p>\n

Now check out what effect this can create in landscape\/ other objects.<\/p>\n

First, a photo taken of a small wooden toy in the same Summit Park location, shot with the Camera+<\/a> app. The colors are true (unaltered), but the photo has a “polaroid” frame for a nostalgic look:<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

And next, a photo of the same object taken with SynthCam<\/a>, focused on the wooden toy:<\/p>\n

\"\".<\/p>\n

In both instances, the apps let me explore emotional aspects in coming across this random, forgotten object (the toy) at the edge of a park.<\/p>\n

So that’s it, my most recent fun-with-apps excursion. Together with SketchBook MobileX<\/a> (which I wrote about here<\/a>), the iTouch and its app-enabled affordances are tons of fun and a good excuse to use my eyes.<\/p>\n

(n.b. the above photos are viewable in full size on my Picasa page<\/a>; they’re down-scaled here)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my birthday at the end of December, I got a new iPod Touch (iTouch?). I flat out love this little gadget: it has a microphone, which means I’ve been able to use it to Skype (with video); to make voice notes on Evernote; and to send myself voice memos by email. It also has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1823,1071,1242],"tags":[31140,31141,2482,6455,283],"class_list":["post-4241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-canada","category-creativity","category-just_so","tag-apps","tag-camera","tag-iphone","tag-ipod","tag-photography"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4241"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4249,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}