ARKANSAS VIA IPHONE

Last Wednesday I hopped on a plane and was whisked off to Little Rock, Arkansas. I was helping out another local photographer who shoots a lot of energy and gas industry stuff on a shoot in Blytheville, Arkansas, a little sleepy town in the northeastern corner of the state, just south of the Missouri state line. I always enjoy working with other photographers, especially when it’s on a project out of my realm of work. It was certainly an interesting trip, filled with layers of protective clothing, hard hats, ear plugs, and a sweltering 120F steel mill. We shot most of Thursday and a few hours on Friday morning, but the sweating and lack of sleep was enough to make me appreciate the fact that once I step off that plane back in Houston I can sleep in and enjoy my office A/C. I can’t even imagine what it is like to labor through that type of work for decades. I brought my 5D II on the trip, because well, as a photographer you don’t get on a plane without a decent camera, but I didn’t even fire off a frame during the few days I was gone. I did however manage to take some photos with my Iphone’s built in camera using the Camera Bag app. The app emulates several different famous “looks” such as the Lomo look, Holga, and Fisheye. For the photos I made during the trip I used the “Instant” setting which tweaks the image and makes it look like it was shot with a Polaroid camera, even dropping it into a Polaroid template as well. None of the photos have been altered, they are presented as they were taken, straight from the phone. I took a few initial shots for fun and just continued to snap away during the shoot and during the down time as well as at the airport.

At the airport in Little Rock about a handful of people from TSA agents to Southwest Airlines personnel asked us what we were photographing. (I guess the 5 huge Pelican cases gave it away)

Each time we replied that we were shooting for a client in Blytheville and each time the response was the same,

“There ain’t nothing in Blytheville, I bet you guys were bored.”

On the last leg of our travel day, from Dallas/Love Field to Houston/Hobby, I paired them up and put together this little series entitled, “Arkansas Via Iphone”. The little series is my answer to those curious few at the airport. Blytheville isn’t a metropolitan wonderland, but there is beauty everywhere, you just have to look for it…and when you find it, you don’t even need an expensive camera!

**UPDATE**

Wow! The response has been very positive in regards to the ”Arkansas Via Iphone” piece. I never thought that they would get around as much as they have! I just wanted to take a moment to say that the series was featured on SportsShooter as well as on Never Center’s (the software developer who created the Camera Bag iphone app that I used to create the images) homepage and twitter feed. The creator’s of the app called it “a lovely artistic project”.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 1:08 AM. It is filed under Personal Work and tagged with adventure, aerial, airplane, app, Apple, Arkansas, Blytheville, camera bag, cell phone, essay, industrial, instant, iphone, Little Rock, Mac, Personal Work, polaroid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.