The iPhone camera has become one of my favorite tools. Beginning early in 2009 I started doing round-up posts of some of my favorite recent iPhone camera photos, and this is Part Five of that series. In addition to these posts I regularly post photos on my Twitter feed, so you can follow along there as well. Many of these, if not all of these were at one point posted on Twitter.

Check out a heap of photos after the jump. As usual, all photos are straight out of the iPhone, processed using Camera Bag, Old Camera, Best Camera, and Photo Gene. You can also find links to all four previous posts at the bottom of this post.

Check out my previous four iPhone Photography Posts below:
iPhone-tography Part Four
iPhone-tography Part Three
iPhone-tography Part Two
iPhone-tography

How about a free screen wallpaper of Ben Hucke for your computer or iPhone? I waited two years for someone to handplant this damn T-Rex face on a BMX bike. T-Rex face? Yes, T-Rex face. There’s one at the Tigard, Oregon skatepark, complete with metal teeth. Since the built the park two years ago, it’s been handplanted on skateboards, and fastplanted on bikes. I brought a few people there that had vert handplants dialed to check it out, thinking they might be into handplanting it for a photo, but it hadn’t panned out. I think I almost got Kagy to try it, but the set up didn’t really work for the way he does them.

When Ben called me to shoot at Tigard a couple months back I didn’t see this one coming at all. He wasn’t sure he could do it as he’d never even tried it, but he got it done several times over, and now fires them out at will. At the time we’d planned to use this for a two page spread Haro ad. Haro hit me up and said they wanted to use it, so I sent it down and held off posting it. In the meantime, Ben and Haro parted ways. At first they said they were still going to run it, but then we Ben hit them up last week, they told him they weren’t.

The long and short of it is, it’s a bummer that it’s been sat on for two or three months. In this day and age, that’s an eternity. So instead of holding onto it even longer, I talked to Ben and Shad from Goods BMX, about making it a free downloadable Goods Wallpaper. Ben rides for Goods, Goods is awesome. So why not. So here it is in all its T-Rex face glory. There’s even an iPhone size for nerds like me.

Download 1680×1050 Screen Size

Download 1920 x 1080 Screen Size

Download 1280 x 960 Screen Size

Download iPhone Size

If you you’ve been following my work, this site, or my Twitter feed, you’re already aware that I shoot photos with my iPhone on a daily basis (in fact if you follow me on Twitter you’ve seen at least a few of these already). You can view my iPhone-tography Part Three post of photos here and access the older ones from there. UK Mac site Cult of Mac also did an interview with me a while ago on how to shoot action photos with the iPhone which you can check out on Cult of Mac here.

Check out some newer iPhone photos you may not have seen yet after the jump. As usual, all photos are straight out of the iPhone, processed using Camera Bag, Old Camera, and Photo Gene.

If you rode freestyle BMX in the late 80s and then the early 90s, Freestylin‘ magazine and later Go were your bibles (I’ve written about them previously here). When Go folded in the early 90s, a void was left in the freestyle community. Young BMXers/entreprenuer’s Hal Brindley and Steve Buddendeck were doing a line of t-shirts called 2B Homecooked Garments at the time, and the brand was picking up in popularity. Hal saw an opportunity and the need to fill the void, and with the help of Happy Zine maker Jimmy Deaton, produced one issue of The Cookbook. The Cookbook was a black and white, offset printed publication with a DIY aesthetic.

Hal put up $5000 of his own money (Print costs have decreased since those days. Now publications skip many of the expensive pre-press phases and go direct to plate.) to produce 10,000 copies of The Cookbook, which he mailed out for free. In return he requested that anyone who liked the ‘zine send a dollar. Anyone who liked it and wanted to recieve the next one, send another dollar. I sent two dollars, and Hal deserved it.

About a year later the first issue of Brad McDonald’s Ride BMX Magazine came out. Issue Two of The Cookbook never surfaced. Ultimately it was the Cookbook that made me realize producing a magazine on your own was attainable, and led to me working in the publishing/media industry, and even producing a few of my own magazines (here and here). After the jump are some details of the first and only issue of The Cookbook that I shot with my iPhone.

Another installment of iPhone photos (you can see the first insallment here and the second here). It’s so convenient as it’s always there (at least when the battery isn’t dead). All of these photos are shot/processed in the phone. Old Camera, Camera Bag, and Photogene are my apps of choice. I’ve also been playing a bit with the Lightleak app, but it’s hit or miss. Making appearances in this round are the singer from Piebald (above), the Weakerthans, Caleb Ruecker, Tim Zimmerman, Old Man Koerner, and more. Check out more after the jump.

I’ve been taking as many photos (okay more photos) with my iPhone camera lately as I have with my “real” camera. It’s always in my pocket, and using one of more of the the many available apps — I discussed some of these in my earlier post here — you can get some pretty darn nice shots with the thing. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I upload these directly to the web in many cases (if you do you may have seen some or all of these already).

All of these shots are shown straight from the phone, in other words, the “look” was achieved using the available apps, and no “computer post” was done. I recently got the iPhone 3GS and the camera is definitely better, but in many cases still requires the finesse of the apps to get some extra punch. It’s not tack sharp, and it’s not perfect, but that’s part of the fun of these types of cameras, to me anyway. Check out some more shots from the last couple months after the jump.

Since I’ve got my iPhone with me at all times, and since we are becoming a “If you don’t upload it to the internet right away it didn’t really happen” society, I’ve been experimenting more with photos from the little bugger. While it’s sort of quirky, slow, and awkward to hold as a camera, it’s always in my pocket so I might as well get the most of out of it.

I’ve discovered a few neat little “Apps” along the way including “Camera Bag” which was used to take the above photo of Mt. Hood. Camera Bag is a collection of seven filters which can be applied to your photos(similar to how a Photoshop plug-in can). Presets include various B&W settings, a Polaroid setting, and one that mimics the look of Holga (toy camera). You can download that one through Apple’s App store for $2.99. I’ve also been toying with “Tilt Shift” which (sort of) mimics a tilt-shift lens, in other words you get somewhat selective focus. Tilt Shift is available for $1.99.

Both of the above applications can be applied to existing photos in your iPhone library, so you can play around with them, save a new version with the desired effect, and keep your original.

The key to getting decent shots with the iPhone is good light, and a steady hand. Use both hands if you can and wait for the shutter to do it’s thing. Hold it steady the entire time. It’s awkward to push the button and keep it steady, but it can be done.

The silliest addition to my iPhone repetoire is a snap on fisheye lens with 170-degree view. Similar to a video camera lens adapter, it has a magnet and pops on over the phone’s lens. Neat. Totally stupid, and awesome at the same time. Available for $20 at usbfever.com. It ships from Hong Kong and takes about 4 weeks to arrive. They also make a variety of wide angle and telephoto options. You could replace you’re whole camera bag with a hip pack full of mini magnetic iPhone lenses. I just got mine so I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it, but a photo of my messy desk is at the bottom of the post. You get some wild distortion outside the areas of focus. Should be a fun toy.

One App I haven’t tried that looks very handy is Snapture, which offers a variety of features including a multi-shot mode which will capture three frames in a row. They also have a timer mode which delays the shot by five seconds, a 3x digital zoom feature that lets you zoom in or out using the slider, and the ability to capture images in multiple sizes. Sounds really handy. The downside is you need a “cracked” iPhone, and I haven’t sucked it up and hacked into mine yet. If yours is cracked, Snapture is free.

Other enhancement options include Panolab, a free App which allows you to stitch multiple images together into a panoramic. If you want to adjust your images levels and sharpness manually after the shot is taken, something like Photogene or the more heavilly featured yet clunky Magic Touch might be for you. At $5 each, Magic Touch has more to it but Photogene’s interface seems more intuitive.

If you’d like more info on some of the above iPhone Apps, iLounge has some decent reviews of 13 photo Apps.

I’ve posted before about how I’m a fan of Apple’s iPhone, and all its bells and whistles. However, after a little over a year of using the iPhone, I’m getting more and more frustrated with some of the basic things it lacks, most importantly integrated support for Multimedia Messaging (MMS as it’s more commonly known, or picture messaging if you will).

I’ve read some arguments that MMS is dead. No, it’s not. MMS accounts for some 70 percent of non-voice call revenue in European markets. And judging from the fact that I get at least two or three a week — which with my iPhone I can’t open without going to a cumbersome viewmymessage.com website requiring a complex username and password combination — there is definitely an existing user base for MMS. While email is just as easy to use for those of us with smartphones, there is still a chunk of the population with “old-school” devices.

There is a workaround for the iPhone user wanting to send an MMS message, though (and if you want to irritate your MMS-having friends, one to receive as well).


Nearly all the wireless providers assign their subscribers an email address based on their phone number. An email sent to that address will be delivered as a text message, thus if you attach a photo to that message using the iPhone’s built-in photo emailing tools, the photo will be received on the other end as a picture message. But then you need to know what the email address is for that recipients mobile network, and before you can know that, you’ll need to know what network they are on! Of course, once you have that email address you can just add it to your contacts, and you’re good to go in the future.

Below are the email addresses for a variety of providers:

Alltel = mobile#@message.alltel.com
AT&T = mobile#@mms.att.net
Boost Mobile = mobile#@myboostmobile.com
Cingular (AT&T) = mobile#@mms.mycingular.com
Einstein PCS = mobile#@einsteinmms.com
Sprint = mobile#@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile = mobile#@tmomail.net
US Cellular = mobile#@mms.uscc.net
Verizon Wireless = mobile#@vzwpix.com
Virgin Mobile = mobile#@vmobl.com

Another way to go at the moment is mobile#@teleflip.com, which automatically sends the picture number to the appropriate carrier. You can also use this service from a computer to send pictures to phones from Teleflip’s site.

Unfortunately if you want to receive picture messages (MMS) on your iPhone, it’s a little more of a hassle for your comrade sending the message. Almost all mobiles allow users to send messages to email addresses. To view the picture [somewhat] easily, the sender needs to deliver their picture to the email address you’ve got set up to receive on your iPhone. And there you go, you should receive a picture to your email. Certainly easier than the current “viewmymessage.com” message that I dread so much. I mean, come on, how many of those on-the-fly pictures are really worth all that effort?

Until there is Apple support for MMS, or some better third party apps, this is the route we must go as iPhone users. So be it.

While I didn’t trade in my phone for the new iPhone 3g, I did upgrade to the latest firmware. With iPhone 2.0 comes the app store, where hundreds of iPhone specific applications are available. Everything from games to productivity tools to news readers are available, some free, some not.

I haven’t dabbled in any of the paid apps yet, but several of the free apps I’ve found very useful including one that pushes New York Times headlines to your phone, and the Instant Messenger app… I feel like Apple originally dropped the ball not including iChat, but the AIM app fills a bit of that void.

One of my favorites is Urbanspoon which triangulates your position and gives you restaurants in your vicinity, which, with the recent update to the app, you can select by food type or select more neighborhoods. It gives information, reviews, and location… it’s great for new lunch spots. It even allows you to shake the phone (taking advantage of rotation sensors in the phone), resulting in a slot machine type effect, with the app making a restaurant selection for you. Fun.

And then there are the tools. Networking through sites like Facebook is made easy with the new Facebook app, allowing photo uploads and more. There are many for flickr, as well. and I just typed this entry with the WordPress app, posting straight from my phone… with a photo even! Excuse any spelling errors, and yes, my thumbs are sore.

photo uploade from my iPhone