iphoneography

Last month I saw a Lifehacker article about how to take great holiday photos with your iPhone and ferreted it away for future reference. My favorite tip was to use your headphones as a remote. While I like to think I’m fairly graceful with my movements, I’m notoriously unsteady with cameras of all kinds.

We’re in a train phase.

Using the headphones as a remote also was a good test to see if my iPhone camera’s constant focusing and refocusing while I’m trying to line up a shot was a problem with the camera or a problem with its operator. (For once, it might be the camera.)

I use Instagram from time to time, but whenever I do I long for the feeling I had when I used flickr more a few years ago. Somewhere along my timeline, the intrusiveness of all of the sharing and tagging and meta got in the way of just taking a photo just for the sake of taking a photo. And then sharing it, because I can.

I ate this apple yesterday.

I used to love digital “toy” cameras (pencam, wristcam), taking all of the complication and settings out of photography and replacing them with the acceptance of flaws, even those that weren’t created by the camera’s shortcomings. Having that same atmosphere in a social app must be so freeing for so many people.

This quote — about Instagram — hits me with a pang to create:

As I used the app more and more, something surprising happened: I became increasingly observant of the world around me. Walking to the subway the other day, I spotted a backhoe parked on a corner and got curious—what could I do with that?

Replace “the app” with “the iPhone camera”. Filters shmilters.

I should be so lucky to remember I’ve got a powerful photography tool in my pocket, in my hands, all day every day.