Finally, after a long weekend, the last post in the 4-part series is here, but for posterity, let’s recap the previous 3 posts.

(Click on each of the following to check out the post)

1 of 4: Oktomat

2 of 4: 5D II

3 of 4: Lubitel

Since the new Apple iPhone 4 was released just a week or so prior to my leaving on this recent trip, and given the fact that I had pre ordered and received the new phone, this post is pretty much a given. I took a handful of images and video after receiving the new phone and prior to leaving, however I was excited that I would be able to travel with the phone to put it through its paces.

I upgraded my phone from the Apple iPhone 3G which was 2 years old. The advancements made in the built in camera(s) were worth the price of the upgrade alone, as it is the camera that is ALWAYS with me, even when there is nothing else. I took somewhere in the ballpark of 3000 images during the life of my 3G (click here to see my previous posts from the older iPhone 3G) and am already on pace to break that record with this new iPhone.

Whenever I see something that inspires me or just need a quick photo of something I reach in my back pocket and pull out my phone. I started snapping images as soon as we were in the airport in Houston and didn’t stop until we were home. I believe I took around 600-700 images during the week-long trip, not to mention a ton of HD video clips as well. During our short stay in Chicago I snapped a photo of this beautiful church on the corner of W. Barry and W. Seminary streets. Moments later I started toying with a few of the image editing apps I have installed on my phone. After combining a few of the effects from 2 different 3rd party apps I stumbled on an effect that I found rather appealing. Throughout the remainder of the trip I would go back and edit images taken on the trip in the same manner and came out with another little iPhone photo essay from the travel.

The original iPhone4 image, the image converted to black and white, and the final image.

The illustration above shows the progression from the initially captured image to how the image looked after the first step with the third image illustrating the completed image.

The first step was to identify which images would work best for the project. I found that high contrast images with fairly simple content worked best. Huge group photos with a ton of people would often seem muddied up, so sticking to fairly simple images worked best.

Secondly I used the Photoshop Mobile app to convert the images into black and white, boost contrast and perfect exposure. The Photoshop Mobile app is great for those basic tweaks that any real photographer would need. Sure there are a few bells and whistles to entice the casual user into purchasing, but it’s the only app I have (and that I have found) that will let me crop and straighten images with a constrained aspect ratio. After saving the edited black and white image I was ready for the final step.

I have several impulse buy image editing apps that I have been into lately such as Red Giant’s Plastic Bullet app that turns your photos into vintage wonders, but the app that worked for me here is Stephen Spring’s Pic Grunger. It’s a simple application that allows the user to select an image and apply any one of several built in textures. Some of the textures look better than others when outputted. I originally dug the “cracked” look, but since it didn’t hold up too well when I transferred them to the computer, I decided to go with the “creased” look. The app seems to output the images at 1000 pixels on the long end (about 1/3 of the original size) which is definitely a negative and I wish there were more choices of textures, but other than that, the app is awesome. The vintage, sepia tone, textured feel produced from the app gave the images a punch that I really dig.

A few of my favorites are in the slideshow below. Check back periodically as I will most likely be adding more images to this gallery from time to time.

Now that all 4 parts to this blog series is complete, please drop me a line to tell me which set of images you liked most!

JULY 2010: IPHONE OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

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”.

So Ive been AWOL for a week or so now, but I am completely settled in here in Baltimore and am ready to work my butt off for the next few months for the wonderful Patuxent Publishing Company. Today was my first day and it went great. I found the days prior to today to be filled more with anxiety to get to work rather than being nervous about how i will fit in and perform. I have my experience over the last year and my previous work in Colorado to thank for that. Maryland and the East Coast is marvelous, the countryside is beautiful and the weather, albeit still hot, is fine as well. I cant wait to venture into some of the surrounding cities as well as the Chesapeake Bay area soon. There are a ton of things on the to-do before I leave list, including eating lots of crab cakes. The city is …interesting. It reminds me a lot of Rio in the way that the rich and poor are sometimes so close its scary. Just like Rio, in its comparison against Houston and other cities Ive lived in, the poor in Baltimore are that much poorer and the rich are richer. The row homes, one of which I’m living in, seem so foreign, but luckily the one I am staying in is absolutely fabulous. I’ll explain more about my experience later but for now, above are a grid of images all taken with my iphone. I took lots of photos from the 2 day trip up to Baltimore with my iphone and uploaded them to my smugmug gallery here: http://toddspoth.smugmug.com All of the images are geotagged which means you can see on a map exactly where they were taken!