I’ve been playing with an app called Plastic Bullet on my iphone. It takes an image, and applies a bunch of random filters to make it look like it was taken with a particularly crappy old camera. Most of what it does isn’t fit for anything but amusing myself, but every so often, it throws up a gem, like this one, snapped at the pub yesterday.
Miranda’s halloween costume. Mine was not quite as awesome, but still more awesome than anything I have previously worn for Halloween. I’m not going to post the photo of me on here, because I didn’t take it, but if you’re curious as to what my Auberon outfit looked like, you can click through to Flickr and look.
The best camera is, of course, the one that’s with you. After last night’s awesome twilight in Tooting, when I had my ever-present compact on me, well, I only went and left the sodding thing on my desk, didn’t I? So when the sunset tonight at Wandsworth Bridge had me leaping off the bus and haring back across the bridge to take photos it was with the only camera I still had on me – the one in my phone. So it’s not pin sharp and it’s not hi res. It is, however, bloody lovely
I have remarked in the past that Tooting gets some of the best Sunsets I have ever seen. I have no idea why this should be the case, but it is. Tonight’s was particularly impressive – this doesn’t really come close to doing it justice – when I got off the bus the whole street was bathed in reddish purple light, and was a wonder.
Oh, where to start with the “barely acceptable”? I wanted the dreamlike quality, I wanted the blur – slightly less blur would have been good, but we can’t have everything. What I would also have liked was the ability to frame the shot better, and to be better at retouching in photoshop, and more talent, and a pony. But this is what I got, and it’s just about close enough to OK to put it online.
To say I have mixed feelings about this shot is understating it. It’s one of a *very* few shots I like from Last Days of Decadence the other week – I’ll be putting the others up on flickr at some point in the next week, and might put one or two more up on here, but honestly, I really don’t like much from that shoot.
The other reason I have mixed feelings is the technique I’ve used here. I have been known to get a bit strident about this “only one detail in colour” approach. I think it’s generally a crutch use to balance inadequacy in other parts of the photo. And yes, that’s exactly what it is here. This shot more or less works without the effect – the eye is drawn to the same place, it’s just that having stark greeny-blue light throughout leaves the shot a bit garish. (Which is my problem with the whole shoot, and why I like so few of the shots I’ve got.)
Anyway, I’m rambling. Look at the man and his pretty green drink, won’t you?
