I have been using my iPhone as an image planning and visual note taking tool for the last six years or so. Actually this was the motivation behind developing the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder (and its predecessor) app.

The Mark II introduced a feature that allows to save full resolution images along the simulations. I’ve added this as the cameras of the iPhones started to produce really usable images, and sometimes I would love to have a clean, frame line free, full resolution image from the iPhone, not just the screen-sized one. Yes, some shots turned out so good that I missed the opportunity to actually use them as real photographs. And I totally unconsciously started to use the iPhone as a real camera…

My Hometown at Night

The above photograph marks the time when my iPhoneography started to be a conscious act. I had some time to kill before a dinner with a friend, but I just had the iPhone with me. No real camera, no chance to get the same light and reflections next time. So I tried my best to make images with the phone. And they turned out to be pretty good.

Side note: my hometown is Sátoraljaújhely, and no, it’s not as hard to pronounce as Eyjafjallajökull – or is it?

This time I shot everything in color – just because the Mark II saves color images. Another month had to pass until I found the Noir style in Photos, and a simple affair turned out to be a lasting relationship.

Lake Tisza Off-Season

That affair was a cold, windy, overcast day, when I stopped by Lake Tisza just to look around. It was well before the summer season, the port still closed. I was sitting in the car, enjoying a very fine ice cream (yes I like ice cream even during the winter), and playing with the concept images shot a few minutes before. The result is what you see above.

Since then I’ve revisited a bunch of my former iPhone images (such as my hometown image), and converted them to black and white.

Thin Forest in the Matra

Of course one won’t print larger than A4 from these files, as at pixel level they are light years away from the image quality my DSLRs are capable of. But at small sizes, especially around A5 (think iPad mini screen size) they look wonderful.

Now I’m on the quest for a good presentation, and trying a couple of different printing methods. More on the results later.

Pier, Lake Tisza

And along with the output experiments, I’m looking into ways to improve the quality of captured images. There are tons of JPEG compression artifacts to overcome, and also the Noir style can be a very blunt tool.

But no, I’m not looking into existing apps to solve these problems, as I find this subject very exciting both as a software engineer and as a photographer. So don’t be surprised if I come out with a pro level iPhoneography app sooner or later. But at the moment just treat it as a rumor :)