Silo City Article

Appreciated Kevin Raber's kind words as he recounted on Luminous Landscape the last Silo City workshop. Seeing him with the 600mm lens made me smile and I knew he was going to be surprised when he saw I had brought only an iPhone to work with in the grain silos. You can view the work from the visits to Silo City here

Here Kevin demonstrates the proper way to use a 600mm lens- as an iPhone tripod!

One of the fun things we were working on during the workshop was the multiple exposure capabilities of the Hipstamatic app. It is a fun to use feature that takes a little testing to get the best results from. Kevin posted some really good examples of using the multiple exposures and demonstrated how good it can be when you nail it. I don't use the feature a lot but it does provide some nice alternatives.

Finding Hipstamatic

photo by Jeff Schewe

I stood in a field in Palouse, the sun setting. My Alpa camera, Rodenstock lens, 80mp PhaseOne digital back was in place on the tripod. As the sun sank lower, I tried to get Live View working but was having trouble. Abandoning the distraction of all the gear, I stopped to simply watch, enjoy the sunset….

I reached into my vest to pull out my iPhone, hoping I might still catch some of this beauty. I opened Hipstamatic, deciding to give the app a try. Setting the iPhone atop all my exotic gear, I snapped my first Hipstamatic exposure, John S lens and Ina's 1969 film. I was stunned. 

I started to use the Hipstamatic App exclusively as we moved around the Palouse. The closer I pushed the iPhone to a subject the better the images became. I moved the camera at angles and levels I could never have done with my Alpa on a tripod. There was such liberty in this-being able to wave the camera around and simply click. 

As I traveled, I began to use the iPhone and the Hipstamatic app more as a primary camera. And with each new iPhone the images keep getting better. The collections of images from my iPhone Hipstamatic work can be found under the Hipstamatic tab.