Instagram: The app that changed this technoslow’s (commuting) life.

Or at least, one part of it. Instagram has utterly changed my mind about shooting with a mobile phone.

Not too long ago, I was trying hard to get enthusiastic about shooting with the camera that was always with me. Yes, it’s convenient, but also laggy, un-ergonomic, takes forever to autofocus, and photos came out flat – low contrast and generally unexciting. There was no love in it.


The few apps I’d been using up to that point were slow, cumbersome and only saved low res versions of anything. Downloading and photoshopping – all well and good, if you’re not after the instantaneous goodness of social networking. Which i am, if i’m shooting with a phone.

Well.

A few weeks ago the internet was abuzz with the newly released Android app for Instagram. And just like that, I started to enjoy shooting with my phone. What Instagram has given me that I haven’t found elsewhere:

  • Quick processing of photos on the fly with presets – no more dissatisfaction with unfinished images
  • Full resolution results

It’s amazing how the two in combination have suddenly upped my motivation to the point where my commute series is being continued exclusively via my phone.


The biggest change in all of this is my outlook on the whole thing. Honestly, my mobile – tortoise-like performance, un-finger-friendly touchscreen – is still an annoying device to shoot with. But being able to “finish” my images in the device itself has given the exercise ultimate satisfaction at the end. Because of this, I have the inclination to learn to overcome the irritants and get on with making pictures.

Other perks of Instagram:

  • Mass posting to various other social networks like Twitter and Facebook
  • Its own little social ecology

I’m new to the social side of Instagram, but I’ve found some brilliant photographers sharing their work in there. Inspiration, served with every refresh.


My Instagram activity is largely confined to pictures taken while commuting. Shooting on the bus with a phone is perfect as it doesn’t freak other commuters out the way a chunky dslr does, and it also gives me something to do when I’m too restless to read/write.

I’m loving it. One of the things that has always simultaneously annoyed and delighted me about shooting with a phone is how imperfect the results are – with the subject matter I’m partial to, you’re usually stuck with the first shot you take, because your subject would either have flashed by, or gotten off. Horizons are never straight, people are ridiculously distorted if the bus is moving too fast, lighting is often questionable, level of detail not great… I could go on.

But at the same time, that’s half the magic of it. Getting a shot right makes it that much better, especially when I’m having to compose a square picture in a rectangular frame. That took some getting used to, but has opened up some interesting creative choices for me – choosing the appropriate crop is another level in the process of elimination and makes things all the more interesting.

Nothing I’m saying here is new, of course. Specific technology aside, the same principles apply elsewhere in photography. But this phone camera app business is a fairly recent discovery for me, and I’m finding it’s challenging me to think and shoot in different ways. Yet another facet of the ever-learning journey.

The Shining

Just some of the many, many pictures I took during Magnum Workshops in March this year, with Antoine D’Agata. We are so plugged into our devices that it sometimes seems as though we are feeding off the energy that their screens emit. It seems inevitable that eventually, we’ll all be sucked into the matrix whether we like it or not.

I took a whole bunch of similar pictures during the first couple of days of the workshop, trying to find out what it was I was looking for. On the third morning, it hit me like a freight train as I was wandering Northbridge, the city’s nightlife precinct, which pulses with tungsten and neon in the dark, but is washed out in the light of the sun. Previously, I’ve mostly shot at night, but this sudden realisation opened up a direction that allowed me to look for things in the day without being discomforted by the excess of sunlight that defines Western Australia in many ways.

Long time readers of this blog will remember that the last workshops brought me tug boats, which culminated in an exhibition. This round of Magnum Workshops opened up another avenue for me that I thought I’d never go down:  Street photography. I never thought I had the guts to be a street photographer. It’s a difficult discipline and for the most part, seems to require a special kind of gumption to put yourself out there, at the kindness/mercy of the strangers you’re trying to extract some meaning of the world from.

But there’s a first time for everything. And you never know what you are willing to do until you have a tutor who will send you, headlong down that route before you know what’s going out. Stepping outside the box, disregarding all the labels you’re so used to assigning to things, and just shoot. For the exercise, for the craft, for the discipline and for the joy.

So, what am I looking for then?

I can’t describe it absolutely yet, but in essense: for the moments when people are “lit” within their surroundings, despite the shadows, or perhaps because of them. That is the loose theme around Alight, which was my projection piece at the end of the workshop. It aligns a lot with what I’ve always found of visual interest, right back to when I was a kid. It has a lot to do with my mode of existence; when solitude/alone-ness exists in the unending madness of crowds and congestion in urban areas, I am drawn to it like a drowning sailor to a lifeline. Trying to create pictures that evoke this is something I am finding very hard, but it’s a great challenge to take up.

I’ll be exploring this for a good while to come. It will change over time I’m sure, and may come to nothing at all, but it is an excellent exercise/kick in the butt, and I’ve learnt plenty in the process so far.

Thank you Antoine, for giving so much of yourself to your group during that week. I have been very touched by your generosity and compassion.

Aside:

The Magnum Mentorship program is being offered in the motherland. If ever I have felt a wisp of desire to return, it would be for this!

Tug Boat Dreaming :: my first exhibition

If you’re a friend on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll probably know that among other wonderful things, I’m having my very first exhibition this year,  as part of the FotoFreo Open Exhibition Programme.

Tug Boat Dreaming is on from March 28 – April 26, at Little Creatures Brewery in Fremantle. If you’re in the area, drop by, have a drink or a meal and wander upstairs to have a look.

A very big thank you to friends and colleagues who attended the launch, with special mention going to my friend Flemming Bo Jensen, who was instrumental in the success of this exhibition from the get go, Ivan Spanjic from Svitzer, and Little Creatures.

A little bit Hollywood

I’ve been at Magnum Workshops Fremantle the past week, under the tutelage of the wonderful Antoine D’Agata. It has been an intense week, of non-stop shooting, editing, and plenty of conversation with Antoine and workshop mates. Five days on the brink of nirvana means I have plenty of thinking to do, digesting everything I’ve learnt and turning it over in my head and photography practice, trying to make sense of it in the context of my present life and plans for the future.
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Stranger Portraits

These few are the first I’ve actually gone out of my way to do. It was uncomfortable and felt incredibly intrusive to me, but perhaps I was the only one that felt that way. Plenty of refinements needed in approach, but considering how I’ve always shied away from exactly this, it’s a milestone.

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