In the 5th in my occasional series of Rothko Homage images…
…I return to the wonder that is the iPhone 3Gs camera. Yes, despite having some rather nice Digital SLR equipment floating about, the, erm, “quality” of the camera in my cellphone actually adds to the effect when trying to “do a Rothko”.
You can see my previous attempts, and the history of my Multiforms endeavors at my Rothko page.
Rothko Experiment 15 – Apple iPhone 3GsApple iPhone 3GS, 3.8mm, Exposure 1/120 @ F2.8, ISO 125, The vertical edges of some new shiny furniture, shot with a grainy iPhone placed deliberately close to prevent accurate autofocus, and subsequently twisted 90 degrees clockwise to throw you off the scent by switching all the vertical lines to horizontal.
The basic technique here is to find…
…2 or more areas of colour and/or texture that are separated by straight lines, and photograph them in a way that distorts them further, reducing detail and clarity to the point that the original subject is unrecognisable and the resultant effect is all you can discern. What better tool to ruin the shot than a badly mishandled low quality cellphone camera with poor noise characteristics 🙂
When using a digital SLR I would normally disable all automation in the camera, deliberately defocus the lens as much as possible, slow the shutter right down to allow for camera shake to blur the image but also to bring colours out of my sometimes bland subjects that you just can’t see with the naked eye and generally find any other way that I can to distort the subject during the exposure.
Rothko Experiment 16 – Apple iPhone 3GsApple iPhone 3GS, 3.8mm, Exposure 1/15 @ F2.8, ISO 100, The edge of some new Lime Green Lacquered Habitat furniture against a black background, though I can't remember where the black came from!
Experiments 15 and 16…
…are based on the same subject; a Chive Green Lacquered piece of storage furniture that Mrs ND and I recently bought from Habitat. In both cases the iPhone camera was deliberately held too close to focus various panel gaps between doors and walls of the cabinet, with the resultant images rotated 90 degrees clockwise to further distort the viewers orientation. Minor post processing was performed in Apple’s Aperture 3 to boost the colours and contrast a little, and also to reign back in the low light and poor camera noise to a degree.
Rothko Experiment 17 – Apple iPhone 3Gs
Experiment 17 was really lazy…
…having just used the camera on my iPhone to shoot something completely different, I placed the iPhone down on my light grey office desk and casually spotted the graduated grey tone across the iPhone screen. The curved back of the 3Gs and the position of the camera in one raised corner meant that light from my window was able to illuminate part of the desk below the phone. With the camera well under minimum focus distance the conditions were right, so I pressed the virtual shutter button and subsequently did nothing but resize and tag it to fit this blog.
Rothko Lives, he’s everywhere.
For more on Rothko please visit my Rothko page.
Have fun,
ND
(c) Nakedigit 2011
Nakedigit 