KOCHI:To most people, their smartphone is a one-stop access to WhatsApp, emails, and selfies. However, technological advancements are changing the fundamental human reality and sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.Taking a cue from this advancement is a rising number of photobloggers in the state. The ever-growing popularity of social media also ensures that spirited snappers face no dearth of a platform to stage their talents.
The Greek photographer Errikos Andreou’s latest cover shoot for Vogue fashion magazine featuring Aditi Rao Hydari using the new OnePlus 6, underscores that heartfelt passion and a good smartphone is quite enough to breathe life into that dream called photography.“Convenience and portability of smartphones give them an edge over professional cameras. Being heavy, it is not always ideal to carry a DSLR. Whereas, with a mobile camera it becomes easier to catch those unexpected moments that appear in a quick flash”, says Ivan Micheal from Thodupuzha, who has been using his iPhone7 to take photographs for the past two years.
“It was during the gap after I was done with class 12 and waiting to start college, that I tried out photography. At the time, I had a pretty decent phone in hand and I started off with that”, added Ivan.
Known as ‘dreamcatcher.ivan’, in Instagram, the 18-year old has had many of his photographs featured by popular Instagram pages like vsco.kerala.co, followmetoo, and moodyindia among others and has offers to shoot corporate advertisements.
“Mobile cameras come with a manual mode just like the regular cameras, providing options to control shutter speed and manipulate colour and brightness and give effects like depth of field and bokeh for portraits”, says Rahil Shiraz, a smartphone photographer from Karnataka.“Besides, photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom and Google Snapseed allows to add professional touches to the raw image, making them as good as the ones shot in a professional camera”, says Rahil who’s OnePlus shots under the name ‘thephotogenic_bug’ have been featured on the official page of OnePlus India.
“Phone camera technology has come a long way so as to bridge the gap between a smartphone snapper and a professional DSLR camera. The most advanced mobile camera available today comes with three cameras on its rear. A 40-megapixel colour and a 20-megapixel monochrome camera deliver great dynamics without the need for a colour filter. The third camera with its 8-megapixel sensor and 3x optical zoom rectifies the zoom function which was a major setback in mobile cameras”, says Albin Mathew, a professional photographer from Kochi.
Realizing the growing popularity of photographs that come with the ‘shot on mobile’ hashtag, smartphone photography contests like Mobile Photography Awards, Huwaei Mobile Moments Photo Contest and Photofie Mobile Photography Awards help artists to take this to the global audience.