Exploring iPhone photography

I've been post-processing some images from my iPhone lately using various iPhone apps, sometimes augmented by some extra tweaking in Aperture. It's interesting to see that in areas where I would have expected the tiny iPhone camera to fall short, like subtle gradients and low contrast areas, it actually creates an interesting grainy texture that's quite pleasing to the eye. Some extra sharpening usually brings this out even more. Gives the photos a little bit of an analog feel. Below are some recent examples.

Trailer for Marc Cornelissen

Recently I finished this trailer for Marc Cornelissen, dutch polar explorer and sustainability pioneer. The project was quite involved and presented a lot of interesting challenges. I'm in the process of writing a long blog post about how it all came together. In the mean time however, enjoy the end result. This one is in dutch since we're still working on the english version, but I think you'll get the picture anyway.

Stories from the arctic

At the moment I’m sending out daily updates on poletrack.com about a short expedition to the north pole which is taking place as we speak. It’s a fun thing to do even if it’s just for the fact that it involves receiving daily phone calls from the arctic ice cap.

Technology has advanced a lot since the days of the early explorers. It’s now technically possible to send voice messages, emails and photos from these remote parts of the world via satellite phone. During this expedition for example we’re having the team call in and leave voice messages every day, which subsequently get posted on the website. This is a relatively simple thing to do, but it gives a more personal touch to the whole thing to hear someone tell about their adventures in their own voice instead of me just writing about them.

I’m continuously looking for compelling ways to tell these kinds of stories from remote corners of the world, and things like social media and mobile web devices create some really cool new ways of doing this, both on the creator and the consumer side. I like to refer to this as “Exploration 2.0”. Almost anyone in the world might be soon able explore previously inaccessible locations through almost-live information and high definition experiences. I might write some more about this topic in future blog posts, as insights, ideas, and technology continue to evolve.

Producing The Edge of Africa

Knowledge is the only resource that increases when shared, and it's becoming more common recently for photographers and cinematographers to share background stories about their productions with the rest of the world. In that spirit I wrote a little piece about the production of "The Edge of Africa" for DigitalCinemaFoundry.com. The tagline of the site is "Learn. Capture. Share." and it's is a great inspirational and educational resource, not just for professional filmmakers, but also for others who want to find about the ideas and execution behind video productions.

The Edge of Africa

It’s been a long time in the making, but I finally finished my latest short film titled The Edge of Africa. It was filmed in South Africa back in July 2009. You may have already seen some of the footage from that same trip in A short hike in Gansbaai.

The Edge of Africa took a bit longer to come together, and was recorded at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. It's where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. The local ocean currents and temperamental weather have caused many ships to end up in pieces on the rocks. I tried to capture the moody and rugged atmosphere of the place by using a dramatic, contrasty black and white look.

Everything was filmed on a Canon 5d Mk2 with a 50mm f/1.4 lens. Color grading was mostly done in Magic Bullet Looks. The music is Only Now by Red Friday. It’s available on iTunes here.

Teaser

Below are a couple of stills from a little video project I've been working on. And no, it's not a BMW commercial. Although I would love to do something like that if they decided to hire me. Click "read more" for more images.

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Virtual made real

Below are two videos I recently saw on Vimeo, that at first glance have nothing in common. The first one is an abstract, computer generated composition of colorful lines, set to a minimalist piece of music.

Creator ku-schneider makes use of a couple of interesting techniques to make the whole thing come to life. For example, virtual camera shake is used to make it look as if the video was shot on a hand-held camera. This makes the extremely abstract patterns all of a sudden appear more real, because our eyes have become used to to shaky camera footage of real life situations. Shallow depth of field (not everything is in focus at the same time) is used to enhance that effect.

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Facets - an iPhone video experiment

Above video is the result of playing around with my iPhone to see how I could use the built in video camera in new and unusual ways. I combined several videos recorded on the iPhone to form a larger composition, the same way you would stitch a number of photos together to make a panoramic image. It's kind of interesting to explore the limits of what you can do with the little iPhone camera.

I used some filters and subtle 3D movement in Final Cut Pro to make it a little more interesting. The soundtrack was created using Ableton Live and Native Instruments Kore 2 Player.

Through the lens

A different kind of TTL flash photography... Normally light is supposed to go into the lens and out again via the viewfinder, but the opposite is possible too. For this shot I fired a flash through the viewfinder at the back of a Canon 5D mk2. Part of the light reflects against the back of the camera and lights up the background, revealing the silhouette of the camera.

The most successful brands

The most successful brands of the future will be the ones that enable people to talk about them. Note that I didn’t say “talk in a positive way”. That part you can only influence by putting out a high quality product, and having equally good customer service. Once you have those two things in place (and if you don’t, sorry, I can’t help you) the key part is to engage with your audience and help them spread the word, which they will gladly do.

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