Cell Phone Photography: One Week, 5 Images, a Whole Lot of Thoughts

I am something of a snob when it comes to the tools I use to make a photograph. As in, I have never believed in making artistic photographs with my cell phone camera. Sure, it’s always there, in my pocket or my bag or in my hand, and sure I use it for selfies or to take quick snaps for Facebook or Snapchat, but I do not truly regard these as works of art. For art, I use my Polaroid cameras or my Nikon or any other camera except the one in my phone. Even when I was purchasing my iPhone last April, I scoffed (in my head) at the salespeople trying to get me to buy a phone based on its picture-taking capabilities because, duh, I’m a photographer — I have cameras to take photos with.

This week, however, I decided to experiment with using my run-of-the-mill iPhone 11 to create photographs that fit into my artistic catalogue. Before starting, I set up a couple of parameters: first, I confined my photo-taking to my bedroom; second, I forced myself to use only the basic editing software that comes with the Camera app. I felt that these two limitations would make the experience more challenging, since my bedroom is an area I am extremely familiar with and, therefore, less excited by, and because I have access to the mobile app versions of Lightroom and Photoshop (arguably better mobile editing software) via my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. I also decided after shooting the first photo that I would keep everything black-and-white, because color can be distracting, and I wanted the viewer to focus on compositional elements (shapes, lines, etc) instead of the color of the images. Plus, I just like black-and-white photography, alright?

With all of this said, let’s take a look at this week’s photos:

Day 1: Midnight

Day 2: Feast

Day 3: Ground-Level

Day 4: Circles

Day 5: Do You Even Read?

Here is what I enjoyed about using my phone camera:

• It was convenient. This is an obvious perk. My phone is usually near wherever I am, it is lightweight, it does not require an SD card or a battery, and there is no pesky lens cap for me to keep up with. It was also convenient being able to do basic editing right in the Camera app instead of having to upload the photographs to Lightroom, export them to Photoshop… you know, that whole process. It was quick, easy, and simple — enough said.

• I could shoot a variety of angles with ease. One thing about a traditional camera is that they are definitely bulky, which means it can be difficult to shoot certain angles. For example, I would not have been able to get that exact photograph of my hairdryer on the floor with my Nikon or Polaroid cameras, because there would have been no way to get the lenses to go that low to the ground, but with my phone, all it took was sitting on the floor and aligning my phone’s lens into the right position, and I had the shot I wanted. Again, it was convenient, but, more than that, it unlocked a creative option I otherwise would not have had with any of my other cameras.

• I could get close-up to my subjects… without a close-up lens! With a dSLR, I would have needed a micro lens to get some of these shots (such as the shot of my snack), but with my cell phone, I could get within a few centimeters of my subject — and keep the subject in focus — without hassle. Again, it was convenient, and again, it opened up a creative option I do not currently have with my SLR setups.

Okay, you get it — what I enjoyed more than anything about using my phone to make photographs was the convenience of it.

Here is what I did not enjoy:

• The lack of depth-of-field options. I know that some phones to come equipped with depth-of-field options and that this statement does not apply to every phone, but my iPhone 11 does not come equipped with such options, and this, I found, to be a hindrance. Depth-of-field, otherwise known to a layperson as having certain things in focus and the rest blurred, is important to me in terms of digital photography, and I missed it here. For example, in the photo of my hairdryer, the background is distracting because it is not blurred out enough that you cannot clearly make out that there is blocky furniture back there. Annoying.

• Editing. Editing on iOS is, in my opinion, clunky and I straight-up did not enjoy the experience of having to sides-croll endlessly to do a couple of simple edits. Again, annoying.

• It was convenient. “But, wait!” I hear you say, “You just said you enjoyed the convenience more than anything! Now you’re saying you didn’t enjoy it? Which is it!? Did you, or didn’t you!?”

  Okay, here’s the deal: while I did absolutely love the convenience of being able to pull out my phone and do basically everything I would do with my dSLR but on the phone itself, I feel that this convenience is a little too convenient. Yes, some of the convenience of having a more lightweight system that could fit into places my usual cameras could not also meant I had more avenues for creativity; this is, to me, the bright side. The dark side, however, is that, because of this convenience, I wound up taking a lot of really crappy shots because I wasn’t thinking about what I was shooting, I was just shooting random things because it was easy to.

This is my gripe with using only a cell phone as one’s photo-taking device: it is so easy to snap, snap, snap without thinking about what you are taking snaps of. In fact, to me, there is a difference between taking a photograph and making a photograph; taking a photograph is a less deliberate action than making one. When I am out shooting with my dSLR, I feel that I have to make more conscious decisions about what I am doing, because it takes more time to get to the point of pressing the shutter button. I have to take the time to look through the viewfinder, focus the lens, move into just the right position — it becomes an intimate act rather than a passive one. With my Polaroids and Instax photographs, I spend time working out the composition and deciding if the shot is really worth it, because, let’s be honest, the film for those cameras is expensive. With my cell phone, I found that my process and my way of thinking was completely different; with my dSLR I will take a series of photographs, upload them to Lightroom, and let them sit for a day or two before I sit down to look at and edit them. With my cell phone, it was all too easy for me to snap, delete, snap, delete, edit right then and there, and not think about the photos again. The intimacy is lost, and, ultimately, I wind up not caring as much — or even at all — about the photos I am taking.

Here is my takeaway from this experiment:

Shooting portfolio-grade photographs exclusively with my cell phone is never going to be for me. I admit I was biased going in, but actually taking the time to test my theory proved that I was right about myself — I am a little too snap-happy to be able to make good, thoughtful photographs with my mobile device. I need more traditional camera in order to ground myself in my work. This is, perhaps, because I use my cell phone camera mostly for Snapchat, so I associate the action of using my phone’s camera as a lazy one for the sole purpose of being stupid with my friends on social media. Or, perhaps, it is because I see too many other people on social media who use their cell phone cameras in place of a traditional camera and post trite photographs that look — excuse me for being so blunt — just like everyone else’s. Whatever the case may be, using my cell phone as my main camera is simply not the lifestyle I plan to lead.

Does this mean I won’t ever use my cell phone camera to create work that may make it into my portfolio? No, especially since cell phone cameras get better all the time and since I don’t have my other cameras with me 24/7. What it does mean, however, is that any photographs I do make with my cell phone will have to have been done with intent, because if I do not feel a connection to my work, what in the world is it worth, anyway?

Photography as Art, Pt. 1: How it Came to Be Recognized as Art

In my last post, we discussed how photography is not necessarily, if ever, truthful, and how photographers, consciously or unconsciously, bend the truth to fit their personal narrative. This, naturally, leads to today’s discussion on photography as a form of art (so, if you haven’t read last week’s post, please, feel free to do so now). This post will be written in two parts — the first part giving a (very) brief overview of how photography became a recognized form of art within the artistic community and the second discussing my personal take on photography as art by discussing what constitutes art in the first place. Also, in my best effort to keep this post as brief as possible and to prevent accusations of plagiarism, I will be including links to the resources I used to write this post so that, with one click, you can have access to even more information on the history of photography (because who doesn’t want that in their life?). Without further chit-chat, here’s some history for you

Photography as an idea has been around since the time of the camera obscura, which used a pinhole to project an upside-down image onto a wall or other surface. Photography as we now know it came into being in the 1820’s when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce exposed a pewter plate coated in bitumen to light via the camera obscura to create the first permanent photographic image, and, from there, the medium took off (for more history on advancements within early photography, click here). At first, photography was seen largely as a form of science and was used for documentary purposes, such to take pictures of people or places. Another turning-point in early photography that made it seem like even less of an artistic endeavor came with the advent of the Original Kodak in 1888 Kodak Brownie in 1900, which were both commercially available so that the middle-class could affordably make images of their family and friends. This promoted the idea of photography as something any amateur could do because a large number of people could get their hands on cameras (oh, how times have not changed one bit).

The first group to lobby for photography as a fine art were the Pictorialists, who rejected the snapshots that cameras like those made by Kodak has made popular in favor of labor-intensive forms of photography that showed the medium to be more than a mechanical process and, instead, one that involved great skill and craftsmanship. Under the umbrella of Pictorialism were the Photo-Secessionists, a group of photographers chosen and led by Alfred Stiegletz, whose aim was to move away from the idea of photography as a realistic representation of the world and, instead, toward a painterly aesthetic (for more on the Photo-Secessionists and for examples of their work, click here). Stiegletz, with the founding of The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (later re-branded simply as 291), was the first to exhibit photographs in a gallery setting, and was critical to the wider acceptance of photography as a fine art (what a guy).

In 1932, thirty years after the beginning of Photo-Secession, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited its first photograph; a year later, the first photographs were acquired for its collection and photographer Walker Evans exhibited the first one-man photography show, both within the museum and within the medium itself; in 1940, with influential photographer Ansel Adams as the Vice-Chairman of the Photography Committee, the Department of Photography at the MoMA was established, and, finally, in 1943, the Musuem of Modern Art Photography Center was established (to view the Department of Photography’s official press release, click here; for a complete chronology of the MoMA’s Department of Photography, click here). It is at this time in the 1940’s that, in The United States of America, photography becomes officially recognized as a form of fine art.

Needless to say, it would take an entire class (very likely more than one) to go over the history of photography, how it came to be known as art, and how it has since continued to evolve and thrive within the world of fine art. Also needless to say is that, although I have BFA in Fine Art, I am not (currently, anyway — maybe someday?) an art historian; I am simply interested in art history and, specifically and for obvious reasons, the history of photography. Finally, I felt that it was important to give the historical context of how photography became known as art before giving a talk on how photography is used in art today and my personal opinion on what makes it art because, well, context is everything, and, to understand the present, you must first understand the past (erm, well… in theory, anyway).

With all that being said, I hope you enjoyed today’s brief history lesson, and I hope to see you in my next post.