I had the opportunity to spend a few days in San Diego, learning from some first-class newborn photographers (baby folding class, I’ve been calling it). I’m so, so excited to come back and get to work on some Minneapolis newborns. Below are just a few of the photos I took while in San Diego.

Adding yet another unique photo opportunity to my list, I attended Lili’s Burlesque Best of Midwest Burlesk last weekend. I’d never been to a burlesque show but I have to say, it was pretty amazing. Witty, tantalizing and classy. “We sell the sizzle, not the steak,” they inform the audience at the beginning of the show.

They also inform the audience that “people will be taking their clothes off!” So the photos, of course, contain very few articles of clothing. Being that this is somewhat of a family blog, I didn’t want to shock you too badly. So the photos are on another page. :)

Click here if you’d like to view the burlesque photos.

Last night, my favorite radio station, 89.3 The Current, celebrated their 5th birthday at First Avenue. The show sold out within minutes and it was a cozy and sweaty time at First Ave, complete with appearance by Prince. Five bands played although I missed most of the first band, Twilight Hours, while standing outside in a very cold entrance line. Once I got in, I didn’t dare take my camera out of my bag for awhile for fear of instant fogging. Here are some photos of the other four bands, though.

Lookbook

Both mayors were there; here Chris Coleman is showing us the importance of mayoral decrees.

Mason Jennings

P.O.S.

Toasting The Current with Mark Wheat.

Solid Gold

At the end of my previous entry about iphoneography, I was thinking I should include a list of the photo apps I have on my iPhone. But I’m on vacation and I was tired by then so I didn’t. Someone mentioned that it’d be nice to know what apps I’d used on the photos I posted. For some of the more basic adjustments/color corrections, etc., I can’t really remember. But here’s a list of the apps I have on my phone and a few thoughts about them. They are in no way comprehensive reviews, since there are handfuls of sites that do that, as well as ratings in the app store. If you’ve got any photo apps you can’t live without, leave a comment!

PS Mobile (free)- This is the Photoshop Mobile app. It’s pretty basic but also quite useful in it’s basicness. You can crop, rotate, flip and adjust exposure, saturation and tint. It’s also got a couple of gimmicky filters like sketch or soft focus. I start most editing in PS Mobile because I find that the iPhone underexposes in nearly every situation that isn’t BRIGHT SUN.

Camera Bag ($1.99) – This is a set of 11 basic filters. I usually check through them all but I’m guessing I end up using one of them maybe 20% of the time? The sample photos on the app page look really nice so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong but most of the filters don’t end up adding anything to my photos. It’s still probably worth the $1.99 though.

Quad Camera ($1.99) – This was fun for a couple of days and I haven’t opened it again since then, which was probably 8 months ago. It takes 4 or 8 photos in rapid succession and creates a single image file of your shots. You can alter the layout. If I purposely set out to make something with this, it could probably create some interesting things but it’s not an app that occurs to me often.

Mill Colour (Free) – I think this is my most used photo app. It’s got ten predefined filters and within those, I generally find one that I like. It’s also got freestyle adjustments for gamma, grain, saturation, brightness, etc. For the price, this really can’t be beat.

Best Camera ($2.99) – This is the app I was referencing in my last post. The filters that it has are pretty well laid out on the linked page. In addition to those, you can directly upload to a variety of places like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc., from the app, as well as participate in The Best Community. A lot of photographers swear by this app but honestly, I don’t think it’s that great. I wouldn’t buy it again.

Camera Kit ($.99) – This is supposed to emulate film processing with push and pull processing and developing methods. Unfortunately, also like film, you can’t preview the effect of the filter while you’re applying it which makes the whole process annoying long and unwieldy.
Mill Color

PanoLab (free) – This app will stitch together several photos to create a panorama. It’s free, so it’s probably worth that. I’ve made a total of zero actual panoramas, with the exception of the one I just made of my living room in the dark to test the app.

TiltShiftGen ($.99) – I love this app. In addition to saturation, brightness and contrast controls, you can apply radial or linear blur to give it a fake tilt shift effect. That’s how the three fall photos and the downtown Minneapolis photo in the entry below were edited. I use this app a lot.

FotoMuse ($2.99) – This is one of my more recent purchases so I haven’t used it a lot yet. It’s something of a grunge app. It’s got a wide variety of grungy borders and overlays. The witch’s house photo and the photo in this entry were both created with this app. It’s fun but not if you’re a photo purist.

PhoneGrafer ($1.99) – This has several color filters as well as sharpen, self-timer, etc., but it takes approximately two years for each filter to be applied and I have no patience for that. I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Polarize (free) – This gives your photo a polaroid frame and allows you to put handwriting-like text on the bottom. Very exciting.

That all being said, here are some unedited, unfiltered iPhone kitty pics. :)

(Turns out the iPhone is also good for photographing and videoing your sister modeling a Snuggie but sadly, I am not allowed to share those.)

Photographer Chase Jarvis has been espousing the idea that the best camera is the one you have with you and earlier this year, he released a book and iPhone app under the same phrase. I haven’t seen the book and overall find the app to be mediocre but I’ve been trying to adopt the philosophy myself.

I carry my dSLR with me frequently but it’s kind of a beast so I don’t tend to have it for day-to-day activities. I generally carry a point-and-shoot in my bag (was a Canon SD700 until my Mom permanently borrowed it, now it’s a Canon Powershot G9) but the camera I always have with me is the one in my iPhone. It aint much in terms of cameras – it’s a dinky 2 megapixels, pretty close in count to the first digital camera I had 90 years ago when even entry level cameras were $600 and were big and bulky like a Fisher Price construct. It doesn’t zoom, it does poorly in low light and it has no controls other than “push the button” (which can be difficult enough to do on its own). But it’s there. So I’ve been trying to use it more.

These were all taken, edited and uploaded using my iPhone. They won’t be gracing my walls any time soon and there are folks out there doing a lot more amazing things with the iPhone camera than this, but I’ve been having fun.

fall scenes near my house

The Rock Bottom Brewery in Minneapolis

Driving home from my session at Home For Life Animal Sanctuary

A scene I was viewing while sick on the couch

Trip to Lutsen (next 3)

(I think below is my favorite iPhone photo so far)

A tattoo parlor near my house. No, I didn’t get one.

Watching the Holidazzle with photographer friends from the delicious Zelo Restaurant.

Ice on my bathroom window

In the bathroom stall at the Bryant Lake Bowl

Some witch’s house, forget where I took this.

View of downtown Minneapolis from the 50th floor of the IDS Tower

And, of course, the best use for the iPhone camera…millions of cat photos! I have so many…I’ll save those for another entry. :)

My cameras are all off on a little vacation at the cleaners and now I will be, too. I’ll be out of the office until Monday, January 4th and will begin returning any emails or phone calls at that time. Have a lovely holiday and don’t get lost in a snowbank!

And since my camera is in the shop, I’ll leave you with a snowflakey photo courtesy of my iPhone.