Bob Crum

A reader and accomplished photographer recently sent me very interesting email. Thanks Phil. One topic was phonetography! Hold on! My reaction was not what you might expect. Truth be told, his message caused me to pause. Actually made me stop and give phonetography more consideration then previous short shrift. Recapitulation is stimulating. Sometimes.

“I have some opinions about the whole smartphone debate you are writing about but that's an in-depth discussion for later,” Phil wrote. Uh Oh!

“I think your basic premise is correct,” he continued. “But I have run into some notable exceptions. I have made 17 x 22 pigment based archival prints of images shot by an art director. He has a great eye, but he also must have had special filters for his iPhone, because the quality was incredible.”

He added that “they both knew how to shoot correctly with the iPhone so what I got from them were full resolution files that didn't need upscaling. These were jpegs, BTW, not camera RAW. However, I did take all the images into Photoshop for retouching and color/contrast adjustments for prints.”

Jpegs? Shocking!

Let's again briefly review RAW vs jpegs and why I've been advocating RAW image capture. RAW is image data directly from the sensor without camera processing. Jpegs are images processed in camera (compressed) and the photo parameters baked in. Of course, jpeg images can be edited afterward but except for Photoshop 'smart objects' editing modifies image pixels and can't be undone. This is destructive editing. Post processing RAW images is non-destructive editing because editing does not modify pixels directly... editing is just modifying the image data instructions. The original remains unaffected. Make an editing mistake or don't like how the editing is proceeding press the reset button. Poof! All better. Begin anew.

Phil continued: “I believe there are now smartphones that have camera RAW. That might be a waste for a lot of iPhoneographers, but for some people, it's a great tool. I believe smartphones can actually increase creativity for some people. It really depends on what kind of photography one wants to do.”

An astute observation. I acknowledge that many phonetographers have no desire or need to post process their jpeg snapshots and that's fine. I don't. Shoot, email it, or post on social media and done. More importantly, however, even phonetography can be 'creative'. (hint)

To that end, Alex Tsepko, CEO of Skylum Software recently penned: “The power of photography (and phonetography) as art is that it serves to enhance the way we see the world. Try taking a photo of the same object every day. What you’ll find is, by spending time studying this object — a person, or a building, or a budding tree — you’ll find new looks, styles, and angles that accentuate it in different, more interesting ways. This kind of practice has a way of activating your brain and stimulating your inner creativity that makes life more interesting. Another thing you’ll learn by familiarizing yourself with photography as art is that it’s not about what you capture in an image, so much as what sort of emotion your images reveal and evoke.”

Snapshots work because sometimes there's only time to record a moment. However, for creative photography, pause a second and ask yourself what are you attempting to capture to share. Will the photo tell a story? More about a photographers eye another time.

Photo of the week is the infamous “F” up on the hill...in bright lights! Awesome! Have you noticed?

Happy photoing. Send your comments, questions and/or suggestions to photography@earthlink.net