App-Art

More than a month without new posts on this blog, I feel quite embarrassed… It’s just that I haven’t been shooting much (that I could share) over these few weeks, but that should change for the better soon.

So now for something completely different!

The popularity of the iPhone as a camera-to-go has caused a flood of tiny apps that do ‘creative’ things to your quick shots. I wouldn’t call the end results great photography, but at least these apps quickly provide a fresh look on otherwise uninspiring pictures… We all (should) know about the more famous tools: Hipstamatic, Plastic Bullet, 100Cameras and the likes. I ran into a few other equally fun ones.

Released very recently, Tiny Planet Photos warps your images into small stereographic projections. I actually moved some older archive shots to my iPhone first to run them through this free App.

No doubt inspired by this App-wave, we’ve seen the first desktop utilities to make similar creative edits to pictures. One that you too may like very much is Lo-Fi. A more than funky user interface alone makes it worth looking at that one.

No fresh pixels to play around with? Get your creative juices flowing and have some fun with your image libraries!

(Note: I did apply some minor Lightroom tweaking afterwards, for instance to crop, adjust levels or add a white vignette effect).

Gear notes: various smoke & mirrors

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Simple pleasures

Sometimes, it’s just light that hits our sensors. Turns into lines, shapes, colors, and textures. Makes us smile, wonder, enjoy. Sometimes leaves us puzzled – but most often with a smile…

 

Gear notes: would it really matter?

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Wild on the track(s)

Getting immersed into the spectacular architecture of the Liège-Guillemins railway station, I could not – of course! – resist the urge to slap my fish-eye lens on the camera and go for the wild views. Things rapidly start moving into a different ‘perspective’, and spaces and shapes take on new dimension.

Getting lost in the big(ger) picture…

Follow my lead

A fish-eye lens also invites you to try out unusual camera positions that introduce all kinds of visual effects and references:

Beam me up, Scotty!

Transflection

The previous picture was shot lying flat on the ground, close to one of the glass elevator ‘towers’ on the platforms, aiming straight up towards the station’s glass-and-concrete dome. Transparency and reflection were lining up perfectly resulting in an abstract composition.

To close, an outside shot where the fish-eye’s distortion of the ground echoes the curves of the station’s canopy roof. 

 A leaf in the night

Now there’s a kind of lens that I could hardly live without…

Gear notes: D700, 16/2.8D

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