Wow! Cool! Amazing! Fantastic! Beautiful! Great image! I love it! You can feel the love online — on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, 500pix, BestCamera, and countless other image-sharing services, social networks, blogs, and websites. It feels good to give and receive praise. It can be motivating!

Ask For It

Do you want more love? Ask for it! There’s an implicit request for feedback when you post an image online, where people can comment on what you post. But, when you post images without a request for feedback, the number of responses you get goes down. Without an invitation, people may be hesitant to give you feedback. Or, they may not know how far to go and end up not going far as you’d like them to. So, if you’re looking for feedback when you post your work — ask for it. You’ll find people are quite happy to share their opinions with you.

Be More Specific

Love may not be the only thing you’re looking for. If you’re looking for more than love, there are many ways to find it. The way you ask for feedback can make a big difference in the kind of responses you get and how useful they are. If you don’t make a specific request, the responses you get will be general and unfocussed. Conversely, you can qualify the type of feedback you’re giving someone. State your approach before giving your feedback.

Ways To Give Feedback

There are as many ways to direct the kind of feedback you get as there are ways to give feedback. Here’s a list of eleven different kinds of feedback and ways to ask for it. You can ask the questions of either single images or groups of images. (You can even use this list to easily copy and paste questions when you post images online. Or make your own!) …

Read my full post on The Huffington Post.

Read more related posts on cell phone photography on The Huffington Post.

Category: Cell Phone, iPhone
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My assistant, Charles Adams, spent this years Maine Fall Foliage Workshop photographing with the iPhone. Below he talks about his experience.

“Making images with an iPhone can be a terrific creative exercise. If you regularly shoot with a DSLR, the iPhone can simplify things and offer a new experience. I found this to be the case during this years fall foliage workshop. I left my Canon in the car along with all of the photographic requirements and responsibilities that I usually attach to it. It was a freeing experience. Suddenly the pressure to make the best photographs of my life was no longer there. I was free to play.

Being able to process your images seconds after shooting them is also key to the iPhone experience. The many apps available make it possible to shoot, edit, share, and get feedback before even getting back in the car. In my case, apps had a direct effect on which pictures I chose to make. I knew I was going to apply water color and oil painting filters to my images, so I tried to shoot accordingly. I set out to find good compositions with strong “bones.” “Bones” meaning solid structure that could benefit from the addition of dramatic effects.

The resulting images were fun to create. Changing the tools you use to make your images can offer new insights into your own photography. I strongly recommend allowing yourself to play.”

Visit Charles’ website here.

Find out about my digital photography workshops here.

Category: App, Cell Phone, Cell Phones Inspire Creativity, Exercises, iPhone, Photographers, photography, Technique, Workshops
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cellphoneradiation

Which cell phones emit the most and least radiation?

Find out here.

Read more in this week’s issue of Time magazine.

Category: Cell Phone, iPhone
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PhotoChangedAgain

Here’s an excerpt from my first post on Huffington Post.

“Photography’s constant move towards ease, speed, economy, and ubiquity continues today and it has recently reached a new critical apex.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Apple released the iPhone (2007) and a host of independent applications followed, designed to preview, make, process, enhance, and distribute photographs in seconds. Photography just got easier, faster, less expensive, and more ubiquitious …
When did you discover you can do this?

5-15 seconds     Make and save image

15-30 seconds  Process an image

15-30 seconds  Comment on an image and transmit it to others

15-30 seconds  Find other people’s images

15-30 seconds Comment on other people’s images or put them to other uses

In about a minute you can make, process, comment on, and distribute an image. It can take you a similar amount of time to do the same with someone else’s image.

If you haven’t done it yet, try it now. I just did. Doing this will change the way you experience and think about photography …”

Read the full post here.

I share useful links to posts on the history of photography, camera, and camera phone too.

Find iPhone Apps and Accessories I use here.

Category: Cell Phone, huffington post, iPhone
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Google’s Goggles is a new app for their Android cell phone. You take a picture and then find out about your subject – place, landmark, book, wine, art, contact info and more. It’s currently only available for Googles Android phone, but similar things are sure to come for every cell phone. Find out more at The New York Times.

amazonmobile

Amazon Mobile is an iPhone app that works on similar principles. You take a picture and send it to Amazon. Amazon will find the item (or the nearest item) and tell you about it and you can order it if you want to. Sometimes the results are funny! We had more than a few giggles after dinner one night when we sent in faces from everyone in the party. Not surprisingly my search came back with a book … 100 Beards. But you can use this app in physical stores and do some serious price comparisons online.

Category: Cell Phone
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iphonephotos1

Chris Alvanas, a professional photographer and photo educator in Washington DC, was reluctant to show us his recent cell phone photographs during my Fine Art Digital Printing Advanced portfolio reviews. But we were all very curious, so he did. The images he showed us were spontaneous, fresh, and inventive. We looked at the images first and later asked questions about the equipment, not the other way around. We all realized, perhaps we should be taking more photographs in more places in more ways and that many of them would be useful for our personal growth and worth sharing with others. Chris made us all laugh when he said, “I took this one out of my sunroof while I was driving. Is that wrong?” So, I recommended Chris also share short insights to go with each moment. Here’s what he had to share with us.

JPC_001

Accidental Irony…

JPC_002

Attention to the small details often payoff with large returns.

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Simple shape and form.

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If you look for it – they will come..

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It is an obligation to challenge yourself and others.

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My vision – your response.

Find out about Chris Alvanas here.
Find Chris Alvanas’ blog here.
Find Chris Alvanas’ DVDs here.
Find out more about my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops here.

Category: Cell Phone, photography, Workshops
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