winter ~ all pictures (embigennable)• iPhone
THERE IS NO DENYING IT NOW, I am an iPhone Photographer. That is a true statement inasmuch as, over the past year, I have rarely used a "real" camera to make my "serious" / "art" pictures. However, that written, it is also a true statement to write that nothing has changed, re: my vision, AKA: how I see and what I see and picture.
I have come to this conclusion-that I am an iPhone photographer (and always have been)-as a result of my attempt to search out and find / define a unique unto itself iPhone picture making aesthetic. That is, a unifying concept of iPhone picture making that goes beyond the mere fact that a picture was made using an iPhone.
Finding and identifying an iPhone picture making aesthetic is sorta like looking for a needle in a haystack. Beyond question, there are more pictures being made with an iPhone (and other similar devices) than are being made with any other kind of picture making device. As a matter of fact, I would go as far to write that if you were to lump all of pictures made last year with "real" cameras into a single basket, that number would be a mere fraction of the pictures made last year with an iPhone or other similar device.
However, that premise begs the question, how many of those iPhone made pictures were made with "serious" picture making intentions. My answer to that question is that the number of "serious" picture makers in the iPhone ranks is most likey a small fraction thereof. So, finding clusters of "serious" iPhone pictures-clusters which could help define an "serious" iPhone aesthetic-ain't the easiest thing to do.
Nevertheless, there is one such cluster, the IPPAWARDS site, which is a site / organization which sponsors the preeminent annual (since 2008) iPhone competition. In fact, it is the site on which I discovered, 3-4 years ago, that some really good pictures were being made with the use of an iPhone. And, it was upon revisiting this site, that I discovered what I was searching for - a genine iPhone aesthetic ....
.... an aethethic which caused me to realize that I have always been an iPhone photographer. That is, since the day I began makng pictures back in 1968.
Since I starting making pictures, I have always been keen about the idea of making the mechanics of making a picture as simple as possible so that the path between seeing and the making of a picture of what I see is as simple and direct as possible. Hence, for my personal work, I have been a practioner of the 1 camera / lens / year school of picture making. Except, of course, I modified that idea to a 1 camera / lens / forever picture making methodology. I also threw a 1 f-stop setting into to the mix so that I had little other than shutter speed and focus to consider when making a picture.
So, for me and how I picture, the iPhone is a near perfect device inasmuch as it requires very little input in order to make a picture. It is as good as a direct from eye to image file picture making device can get, which is the result of the fact that the device does almost all of the "thinking". And, for my very intuitive and spontaneous picture making methodology, it is a match made in picture making heaven.
All that written, what, iMo, is the iPhone aesthetic? As I see it, the iPhone's ease of use has "allowed people to capture meaningful moments spontaneously" (according to NEWSWEEK). That is, pictures which "come from a very personal place, with less technical experimentation and more focus on moments, emotions and stories" (according to Kenan Aktulun, who created IPPAWARD). Pictures which are, iMo, honest, realistic, human, articulate, without artistic pretensions and closer to the stature of true art than any of the inbred preciosites eminating from many of the staid and stale "traditional" picture making genres.
To be certain, that aesthetic is but one variant to be found in the iPhone picture making world. However, it's the one to which I subscribe and the one I have always subscribed to in my picture making life.