By now you ’ve probably encountered or taken some word-painting taken with lo - fi iPhone camera apps likeHipstamaticorInstagram . These are the pocket-sized , grungy - looking , toy camera - similar images popping up all over Twitter and Facebook . The trend has even open to OS X with filter - centrical redaction apps likeFlareand Photo Effect Studio .
These apps mime the look of toy cameras , and other miserable - end photographic film camera that , due to poor mental synthesis and low - grade components , yield image with very specific problems . Some mass key out this as a retro feel , but there are plenty of old cameras that yield in high spirits - quality result . What the these apps simulate is a very tinny film camera .
So what makes the Hipstamatic and Instagram look so popular ? Why are these muddied , ill - colored , sometimes washed out images so appealing ? To empathize that , you have to bear something very underlying about the nature of photography .
This image was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera. Click to enlarge.
The big lie of photography
The fact is : no matter what eccentric of camera you apply , no exposure really looks real .
Sure , photograph may front naturalistic , but no simulacrum — whether painted , drawn , or captured with the best photographic camera money can buy — actually looks like the aspect did when you were standing there . First , there are the mere technical differences . Our eye can comprehend far more gloss , and a enormously greater range of dark to light than can any photographic camera . And , of course , our eye have a all-inclusive athletic field of view , deliver stereo 3D , and present the world with very particular proportions .
But there are other things that add to your optic sentience . None of our senses work completely independently of each other . Your ocular perception is influence by what you discover , smack , and feel — as well as what you ’re feel emotionally — as each of these thing point your focus through a shot , and touch your emotional reply to what you ’re viewing .
This image was taken with the Hipstamatic app on an iPhone 4 camera. Click to enlarge.
When you repress a shot to a flat image on newspaper , take away a bunch of the color and dynamic reach , and isolate it from the full sensorial world of the actual location , you end up with an paradigm that is far less “ real ” than what you actually experienced when you have the picture .
That may seem obvious to experienced photographers , but what does it have to do with the lo - fi photography trend ? Bear with me …
Photos as abstractions
plain , when I say a photo is realistic , I mean that it ’s astonishingly realistic . Nevertheless , it is still an generalization that ’s a long way from the world that you experienced when you took the flick .
This image was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR television camera . snap to enlarge . sympathize that photography is a frame of abstraction is vital to being a honorable photographer . Because if you conceive that photos capture a completely real representation of a aspect then you ’re give way to be disappoint , and you ’re not going to get very unspoilt results .
You ca n’t just point a tv camera at a vista and expect to get a good picture just because you have an excellent lens and a detector with decade of millions of pixels . Because you ca n’t absolutely becharm reality , unspoilt picture taking is a process of representing your scene using your photographic mental lexicon — light , shadow , form , color , line — and trusting that the witness will understand that shot the way you require . The witness is your silent originative pardner . When they look at your picture , they “ finish ” the conniption inside their head . They take that nonobjective matter that is a exposure , and turn it in to a reality inside their mind .
This image was taken with the Hipstamatic app on an iPhone 4 camera . Click to enlarge . And very often , the more abstract an mental image is , the more top executive it has for the viewer , because their visual signified must do more oeuvre to translate it . And as the looker interpret the image , they do so according to their own memories , experiences , and feelings . Therefore , if they have to do more reading , they very often come off with a solid reaction to the image .
This is why black and white picture taking can be so sinewy ; with colour strip from the picture , it becomes more abstract , requiring the watcher to engage more tight with it . And this is one of the reasons why Hipstamatic and Instagram so often gives results that are far more engaging and emotionally satisfying than a “ more realistic ” effigy .
Culture and tradition
People often address of calamitous and white images as having a “ timeless ” quality . This is partly because , stripped of colouring , they can more easy be interpreted as having been shot in a variety of epoch . But it ’s also because black and white photography has been around for 150 years . When many mass see black and white photos , they at once think “ quondam . ”
Lo - fi iPhone images are the same way . Their grungy texture , light-headed leaks , rocky border , and skew color invoke destiny of associations in our sensitive - saturate minds . perhaps you see “ former ” or maybe you see “ 80s music video . ” Either elbow room , these associations lead you to cast the image into a plaza a little bit remove from reality . But because you have so much room for interpretation , you belike end up in a world that you find very gratifying .
Exploring and meet with abstraction in photography , and the associations that viewers make when face with especial colors , textures and specificlookscan be a great way of improving and expanding your creative palette .
Perhaps more significantly , it can make you a more healthy viewer . We live in an image - heavy world , and those who do n’t realize how their feelings can be manipulate by photos will have a more unmanageable clip right interpreting the images fed to them by the medium .
The Hipstamatic made the front page of the New York Times last class . Not in a story about the app itself , but in the form ofa series of images shoot in Afghanistanby a lensman using the Hipstamatic app . The give-and-take of whether this is valid photojournalism is not something I ’m going to get into here ( the photographer Damon Winter discusses his decision to use Hipstamaticin this web log post ) . But you may think about whether draw journalistic images more nonfigurative — and therefore more open to viewer interpretation — is a respectable thing or not . You might find you’re able to come up with arguments both for and against it .
