When big cameras imitate mobiles

I’ve really been enjoying the photos of the Olympics in the newspapers. But a photo in today’s Guardian caught my eye because it seems to take some influence from smart phone photography. Or am I being a weeny bit presumptious? You decide.

The photo (by Anthony Devlin/PA and on page 7 of the sports section - I couldn’t find it online) is of our reggae-loving gymnast, Louis Smith, doing his silver-winning display on the pommel horse. It uses our beloved tilt-shift effect, which I blogged about recently. Tilt-shift is a technique that can be produced using special lenses but in this case it looks like he’s applied it after taking the photo. On his computer (or on his iphone?). I say that because it actually commits an “error’ that I often tell my students to avoid. Which is to have the focussed area on something in both the foreground and the background. The classic iphone application of tilt-shift imitates the shallow depth of field achieved with a wide-aperture DSLR by focussing on the foreground and blurring the background. And you lose that effect if both are in focus. But as one of the most popular features on Instagram and many other apps lots of people use it without taking my advice (huh!) and so it has become a classic smart phone style of photo.

So this “big-camera” photo has pastiched a mobile photography style. Traditionally averse to some of the more outlandish effects used commonly by mobile photographers, are some of the more mainstream media beginning to be a bit more open-minded towards mobile photography? Either way, love the image Anthony, and hats off for trying out something new.

Seeing the light?