Photoshop for iPhones!

I’m super über excited for this huge step in phonetography:

Remember that last year Adobe officially launched Photoshop Touch for the iPad and Android-powered tablets? It was priced at $10, and its features included layers, selection tools (refine edge is here!), adjustments, and filters, as well as a new Scribble Select, pretty handy if you needed to keep and remove elements of an image. Unfortunately, the max resolution was of 1600X1600, which didn’t bring it any stars.

Well, Adobe just announced that Photoshop Touch is now available for Android and iOS smartphones, as well as for the iPod touch. What does it offer you on top of the previous version:

• work on files up to 12 megapixels with higher resolution capabilities (don’t bitch – Adobe announced is pretty proud of this!);
• use your mobile device camera to fill an area on a layer;
• sync files to Adobe Creative Cloud™ and open them in Photoshop to see your layers.

Apparently, this is what you could do with a smart phone and the Photoshop Touch, but I’d take it with a grain of salt:

..or a whole bag of salt, as a matter of fact:

But for only $5 – that’s the price of this babe! – I think I might go wild and take my chances 🙂

At the end of day, there are amazing artists out there who take unique photos with Instagram – that so-called pros with last generations of Nikons and Canons are not even hoping to capture. Who knows what they will come up with now?!?

First real time photos from Inside North Korea

Photographers could always visit North Korea, but generally not as photographers. Or at least not us phonetographers. Until recently, mobile phones weren’t allowed at the entry in the country, and there was no access to wireless data.

But 15 February brought to us the first Instagram photos uploaded in real-time. The photos have the signature of Jean Lee, AP’s Korea bureau chief, and David Guttenfelder, AP’s Asia chief photographer.

Photos by Jean Lee

“I feel I can help open a window into a place that would otherwise rarely be seen by outsiders,” declared David on the Instagram’s blog. “As one of the few international photographers who has ever had regular access to the country, I feel a huge responsibility to share what I see and to show it as accurately as I can.”

Photos by David Guttenfelder

“There are so many curious, strangely beautiful, or melancholy details around us here…These might not be typical of the news photos I usually transmit, but they offer fleeting glimpses of this country, and how it feels to be here,” said David.

Marksta App – it watermarks your iPhone photos

You don’t want your Instagram pics flying around on the internet, and get shared on social networks without any credits? Watermark them!

Get Marksta App, developed by photographer John D. McHugh, especially for fellow photographers using iPhone cameras, interested in protecting the commercial value of their work, but also their moral rights.

Marksta gets quite creative, allowing users to choose from a variety of borders, fonts, sizes and colours.

More on Marksta in the British Journal of Photography.

Instagram Old Filters

The Instagram Old Filters aficionados have a new chance: they can actually buy a set of presets for Lightroom recreating the first version of the Instagram filters for $20 (or at least if they live in the USA). Nevertheless, the Instagram new filters are also on sale for the same prize. Getting both of them with the same click will save $10.

More on the issue at the Photoblogger.

However, think twice: the price is dirty cheap for nice presets, but would you really want all your photos to look as if they were all taken with your phone?

Besides, what photoshop-er are you if you are buying presets?

“Notes for Walking” post-impressions

As I was saying yesterday, or the other day, or any day since I’ve done it, “Notes for Walking (the space in between time)” totally rocks.

It’s an amazing multimedia installation (text, photo, video, audio) that you can both watch at the Mosman Art Gallery and experience later on your smartphone/iPad while walking around at Middle Head Reserve near Mosman (you can skip the first part, but the second one it’s a ‘don’t miss’ for anyone with good mobility!)

Ultimately, “Notes for Walking” is an artistic and introspective journey in which you’ll be led by a smarthphone app (preferably download it before you get there – 60MB; I’ve did it at the Gallery – they are kindly offering great free wifi and took me only 2 mins).

The tour takes you in the heart of the Middle Head National Park – Corner Old Fort Road and Govenors Road – to explore several parts of the site: the Gate, the Outer Fort, the Inner Fort and the Cabin. Old naval fortitifications with mysterious tunnels and cannels and mazes, they are all architectural and historical jewels waiting to be admired. Positioned on harbourside cliffs, they offer breathtaking views of the Sydney Harbour, too.

At any time, you can check your app for the artist’s notes. Megan Heyward, ’cause she’s the creator of ‘the magic’, prepared various sets of images, texts, video and audio fragments to be watched on each of these spots. It’s an amazing experience interacting with her pieces of art at the sites they’ve inspired them.

Likewise, the quietude of the space, the height, the beauty of the landscape is an invitation to meditation by itself for all the visitors, turning their introspections in parts of the artistic journey.

Don’t miss this chance to get inspired! Take some photos and write your own messages while explore the Middle Head.

SydneyFieldTripper shares her impression here.

I’ve already posted my Instagram-inspired (to keep the digital media mood) photo essay here. The poem accompanying it just wrote itself in my heart while looking to the world from the Middle Head fort.

My “Notes for Walking”

Early in the morning I found the telegramme

Whither your words took me, I could find no one.

I was still calling you God when I got lost following the right sign.

This poem, this poem wa­sn’t of mine.

I saw your cell, your stone, your bed,

your pain, your blood,

your hopes and dreams

dried in a hook.

I wasn’t calling you God yet when I choose following the left sign,

the stillness, the wave, the sky, the water, the flower,

and the thought

I bought once for a penny

that

Every hour, every minute, every heartbeat, we are dying a little and living a bit.

2012 in Phonetography

Anton Kawasaki writes a very comprehensive piece on the significance of 2012 in phonetography for Digital Photography Review Connect, “2012: The Year in Mobile Photography”, recapping the year’s milestones:

• mobile photography connected with the mainstream media;
• it penetrated the art world;
• phonetography communities and creative projects developed;
• Instagram exploded;
• mobile photography was monetized;
• mobile phone cameras got high tech;
• Hipstamatic went big;
• Hurricane Sandy smart phone photo of Ben Lowy made it to TIME Magazine cover.

Here is one of my favourite phone shoot of the past year:

“Untitled” by Richard “Koci” Hernandez

Photo by… Instagram

Reporting on the viral fires in Tasmania, The Age gives the credits for a heartbreaking photo to… Instagram!

“Tim and Tammy Holmes had to take their grandchildren into the sea to escape the  flames. Photo: Instagram“

* Honest mistake or negligence, such behaviour might lead to a common media practice consisting in using images shared by the public on social networks without the proper credits.

Later edit: I reckon the credits should go to Tim Holmes (grandfather of the family featured in the pic), as a very similar image in terms of composition, colors and exposure was credited to him today (9 January) by The West Australian:

Sydney Fireworks Photography 2013

Happy New Year 2013!

Sydney New Year Eve spectacular fireworks weighted 7 tonnes, costed $6.6 million AUD and had an audience of 1.6 million people live around the Sydney Harbour, 2.3 million across the country and more than a billion around the globe. Pop princess Kylie Minogue helped choosing the theme of the fireworks – Embrace – the colour scheme and soundtrack. She was also the one who pushed the button!

But who captured the most spectacular photo of the Sydney New Year Eve Fireworks 2013?

Media

Most popular photos (like it or not, by now they are everywhere – the only reason for which you might not have seen it is that you don’t have a Facebook account):

 Image Courtesy of City of Sydney

A great ‘kiss’ version offers us David Gray, from Reuters:

                                                                        or Damian Shaw, from AAP:

but I highly admired the shoots of Cameron Spencer, Getty Images, as well:

Tom Gray, Reuters, chooses also a city perspective:

A unique display was captured by Tim Wimborne, from Reuters:

My breath was taken away by the less comercial image featured above from City of Sydney:

(I’m quite curious by now who are the City of Sydney‘ photographers -credits should be in order!)

Attila Szilvasi’s composition is also impressive:

One of the few vantage point photos belongs to Edwina Pickles, from Sydney Morning Herald:

while the shoot of Rohan Kelly, from Sunday Telegraph, brings in a little bit of a vanishing point perspective :

Greg Wood, AFP, takes over the early fireworks:

Sydney Photographers

Sydney-based photographer Vincent Lai teaches an amazing lesson when obtaining some wonderful images with a tiny point and shoot camera, and hand holding it:

Also, Rachel Greig‘s Instagram-inspired capture of the 9 pm family-oriented fireworks is just lovely: