Alternative Camera – A Professional Child Photographer’s Blog Carousel
Wow, it’s been a couple of months since I participated in the Pros blog carousel. This month I am particularly excited because our theme is ALTERNATIVE CAMERAS. I had super high hopes for the execution of this month’s theme but ended up getting super sick for most of this past week and ended up unable to come up with something awesome while laying on the sofa all day. 🙂
Not to worry, I had a really cool AHA! moment earlier today – use of my FAVORITE alternative camera (my iPhone 4!) but with a twist. Normally I use a few iPhone apps to create amazing works of phone camera art like the one below:
While the apps on my phone help me express my creativity within the confines of my phone – I thought it would be kind of cheating using just THAT as an alternative camera method. To me alternative cameras include homemade pinhole cameras, Holgas, my old Polaroid cameras…you get the gist. Manual, non-digital, more film-y things come to mind when you utter the term “alternative camera”.
While brainstorming I had a total AHA moment and started digging through my piles of never used items. YES! I found an old sunset filter (from my old Cokin system) and a homemade (on plexiglass) filter I made in 2010 at a creative photography workshop I attended. Tons of snow here in the Chicago area would’ve made for some sort of stark images, I loved the idea of warming them up with the Cokin filter. I used my iPhone – yes my handy iPhone – for pics with this filter combo.
The homemade filter is just a piece of plexiglass, cut to a rectangularish shape, beat up with sand paper, nails, black paint smeared by hand. I made it sort of to have a built in vignette. Lastly I am including a photo taken with that filter (and a quick BW conversion, nothing else) with just that filter and my Canon camera I use for all my shoots – just to showcase how incredibly awesome a small, relatively inexpensive homemade filter can create kind of cool art.
My Nigra Magnolia bush, cold & barren
The sweet gum tree is ready to shed these devilish balls come spring (sigh)
Here’s the two filters I used for the above 3 images in combo with my iPhone camera (no apps!)
Finally here is the photo I mentioned above, taken with that homemade filter + my Canon body and a simple black & white conversion:
I encourage you to round through the carousel and there is a lot of talent in this circle and some amazing ideas for this project, the next stop is my friend Dawn Sela – NY Baby, Child and Family Photographer
Previous blog carousel entries can be found here if you’re interested in what we’ve done before. More of my iPhone blog entries are located here.
Thank you for stopping by…if you enjoyed this post, visit our full site at Marmalade Photography for our full portfolio and to learn more about working with Marmalade Photography!
