Today’s topic is about mobilography and how it is winning traditional photography. It’s been 20 years since the world’s first phone with a built-in camera appeared. During this time, technologies have improved so much that photos taken with a phone compete on an equal footing for an award in photo contests with pictures taken with an SLR camera. And now there are even separate photo awards for them.
Facts about Mobilography Victory over Photography
1. Thanks to Instagram, of course. This mobile application appeared in October 2010, and already in December, it gained a million users. And in 2012, when the Android version was released, in just the first 24 hours, the app was installed over a million times.
After the shot of this social network, large-scale development of mobile photography as art became possible. As elsewhere, there is a lot of graph mania, but there are also masterpieces.
2. In 2012, a mobile photo was featured on the cover of the famous TIME magazine.
Photographer Ben Lowy captured Hurricane Sandy on his mobile phone and sent it to the editorial office. The quality of the picture was enough even to crop it.
3. And in 2013, photographer Nick Laham filmed several photosets of the New York baseball team for The New York Times. Moreover, he photographed both on an iPhone and a DSLR.
But here’s what is surprising: in the newspaper’s editorial office, precisely those frames were selected for printing filmed on a mobile phone most likely, because images of inferior quality are more familiar and familiar to the readership of the edition.
4. The first exhibition of mobilography was held in London in 2002 – already 18 years ago. And even then, not only ordinary owners of mobile phones and eminent photographers who are accustomed to taking pictures with a DSLR took part in it.
For example, this photo of Hong Kong was captured with a Nokia N95 phone.
5. Here’s what, and in selfies, mobile phones have no equal. This word was entered into the Oxford Dictionary in 2013 and immediately became the word of the year. And in the spring of 2017, again in London, the world’s first exhibition dedicated to the history of selfies was held.
Self-portraits of famous artists presented the historical part of the exhibition. Modern expositions were devoted to selfies of celebrities and ordinary users who took pictures of themselves in extreme situations.
6. Now even weddings are filmed on a mobile phone.
In 2012, photographers Kim Thomas and Cole Rise filmed the newlyweds’ wedding from San Francisco on iPhone and processed it on Instagram, and shooting on the iPhone was a condition of the customers. As a result, 550 photos were taken, 120 of them were processed and given to customers.
7. After all, mobilography has been taught at OrigaZoom photography school since 2019 – online and offline.
