A last Note on this blog...

Mobile Nomad has had a good run, but as with all things, I think it is time to say good bye. This is not to say that there is nothing good anymore with mobile photography, just that it isn't much good use of your time.

I have had my payouts from mobile photos reduced from 5 bucks to two over the last few years, and to say that the opportunities are promising would be as bad as saying that the Russians hacked the Trump presidency.

I still shoot with my mobile, which is a LG V30+. And unfortunately, I will be doing so for stock use rather than for sharing.

But that's not to say that I would share what I shoot on Instagram. For those of you who have been wondering what I am up to can follow me there.

Writing a blog like this has been very fulfilling but it will never pay the rent or buy me enough beers to get totally smashed. So like everyone else, I will move on to greener pastures and continue to shoot on mobile for my Instagram account and on film. I have a separate blog on Blogger which caters to film photography....another site which I have abandoned since the technology in film or analog photography isn't advancing past where it stopped in the 90s.

I think this will be a fitting end. Mobile photography will live on. Hopefully when I have time to do a book and conduct actual classes, but it will be for one to one.

The sharing economy doesn't pay. Just so you know... I don't think I have gained anything by sharing. So with that in mind, I bid you farewell.

Perhaps we shall meet again in another life.

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Death of the DSLR: Mobilephotography Awards 2016

With photos like these? Who needs a DSLR? And with it, the 6th Mobilephotography Awards comes to a close. In the Photo photo essay category, anyone with a camera would be wondering why Leica styled monochrome photos were entered in such a contest, well for one maybe it wasn't shot on a Leica?

Well, if that is the case, then what hope have those with Canons and Nikons?

One of the persistent problems with digital photography is the democratization of the image industry in photojournalism. You can pretty much do anything to match a pro if you knew the tips and tricks of your camera phone.

All camera brands built their reputation on photojournalism. Canon was the leader in sports photography and still is, Nikon was a leader in photojournalism but no more, and so was Leica which was heavily associated with the likes of HCB during the war years and later as a street photography/news camera icon.

Today, mobile phone photography has taken all but the sports photography industry with catchy photos and it will only be a matter of time before the DSLR becomes obsolete. Is this a good or bad thing? Depends which side of the fence you are sitting on. For those whose livelihood depended on selling cameras, this is a game changer to be worried about. For those who shoot photos, it just becomes another excuse for not carrying that DSLR that costed you a fortune.  

This worrying trend has seen sales of DSLR equipment plummet to levels not seen before and there are even more brands jumping onto the photography truck stop hoping to catch a ride on its coat tails before it all goes to bust. 

Different Phones for Different Folks

Huawei jumped into bed with Leica to produce the P9 and Mate 9 camera phones which emulate the Leica look in photography. This means the phones itself have this magic formula to give it a right dash of contrast to make it look outstanding.

Not only that, Huawei also teamed up with Porsche to make a Mate 9 derivative, known as the Porsche Design Mate 9. But did Porsche put in a bit of its Weissach magic into it? Not that I know of.

With phone cameras these good, why bother with a DSLR?

For the record, we are already living in the age of the dual camera phone. Now we only need to add one more to conquer the Sport Photography industry and I believe it will be within the next five years.

So what good is it to carry that DSLR with you?

For one I can't figure this out.

During the time I was the DSLR consultant to Sony, I figured that people still had to carry a Notebook with charger, a few SD cards, and three lenses with their camera of choice while on holiday. But today, you'd be quite foolish to lug around such monstrosities while on holiday.

Everything you need TODAY resides in your camera phone. Regardless if you are a Android or iPhone user, you can now upload all your photos shot during the day to Google's Photo storage. I do know many idiots still do not know such a feature exist and I have personally met them. I ask them if they knew they didn't have to back up their photos manually but install an app from Google or Flickr to do this.

Of course, the fate of Flickr is in peril and the hundreds of gigabytes of photos could get deleted if it went bust. But Google photos still offered an alternative cloud storage if you quit Flickr.

So, out the window is the computer and external HD drive. Even if you are going rogue where there is no Wifi or 3G, there is still hope in Wifi enabled HD storage which you can tether your smartdevice to and back up your photos. Some even have up to 10 hours of battery life for you to back up your photos from you iPhone, so why are you still carrying a Notebook computer?

Sure you might want to have three lenses for your DSLR just to have a choice of view angles and Bokeh. For Bokeh, you now have the Google Camera App that mimics the depth of field or use a dual camera iPhone or Huawei to have the same effect.

You don't even need Photoshop on your notebook to process photos either. The latest update from Snapseed has included the much needed 'curve' feature which now means you can edit your photos on the fly while waiting for the bus.

The last bastion of the DSLR in everyday use has to be night photography which at the present time most iPhones or smart devices cannot do. Now look at the term 'night photography' as opposed to low light photography. I have used this to differentiate the two as iPhones and Android device can perform pretty well in low light these days.

Some of you might say that you can't shoot sports photos on an iPhone but this is not entirely true. Remember Dan Chung? He shot the Olympics with an iPhone. Of course he needed some help like using a Binoculars as a Zoom lens.

I think it will be only a matter of time before someone uses an iPhone with a binoculars to shoot the Le Mans 24 hours.

Impossible? Not really. Phones these days have burst speed to capture action photography of up to 10 frames a second. Even on the fastest film cameras of old, the Nikon F5 only achieved 8fps. This means if you can't capture a decent action shot with 10 fps, you better go back to your day job.

The death of the DSLR is imminent.

I will miss the this beast as much as I miss vintage cars. But for me, there is still hope in film photography.....so all hope is not lost.

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Kodak resurrection: Behold the Ektra Phhone

Yes, Kodak is alive and coming back to take over Mobile Photography. This iconic name was the hallmark of great photography until its apparent collapse in the 21st century. That said, it might just be able to get it's act together to mount one last charge to change its fate for the better.

The new smarphone with the moniker... Ektraphone,  isn't a licensed device but a true to form original Kodak product and design. Sporting a 21 megapixel sensor and 3GB of RAM, this Android device would appear to be some sort of Sony Xperia phone that didn't get to production. Ok, maybe it was a Dtek 60 clone too for all we know. The Blackberry branded Dtek also has a 21 megapixel camera.

Kodak wants to sell you the Ektraphone as a lifestyle product, something you take along with you instead of that overly heavy DSLR which Canon and Nikon wants to sell you.

Trusted that most of these DSLR are within the 24 megapixel sensor arena, the Kodak smartphone would be an ideal fit. The f/2.0 lens should be a cool way to deal with low light problems and with the fancy carry all purse, it should look hip.

No sample images are available but expect these to pop up when the product releases worldwide. For now, it is only a UK only product and sells for US$550.

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VSCO gives you the opportunity to use a Studio for Cheap in NY

To be honest, do we need another photo sharing platform like VSCO? I was one of the first to download and try out the new app that appeared on iOS some years back and was astonished to find that their business model is based on filter presets, which you can buy as an in-app purchase. 

Later, this same photo editing suit was launched on PC/OSX where you can use those same editing filters you purchased on your mobile on a desktop version. 

So where have they gone now? 

Rent a studio for free if you have no space to shoot. There is a penalty fee of US$250 for cancellations within 72 hours and there is no mention if you get to rent additional studio equipment for cheap if you lack certain accessories. 

The new studio is located in New York and VSCO claims it will add more studio locations when they expand their reach. Not a bad idea really but it's kind of difficult to appeal to photographers when the free service is only for two hours. There is no way to extend this so you gotta shoot real quick. 

The problem with this model is simple. Having a studio allows you to stage your own shots or passion project but it doesn't help if all you have with you is a mobile app and a smartphone.

There is also no requirement that you must be a VSCO user. All you need is to send a request and explain your passion project in an email. After that, they would get back to you to see if you qualify to use the space for free.

VSCO App Revitalized

VSCO has since introduced an Android app and although they have added a few more photo editing tricks on their mobile app, the chance of photographers having used these filters is pretty low since you don't fancy paying for them in the first place. This is probably why they feature artsy pictures edited using these filters on their discovery blog, which encourages you to buy these filters. None of the pictures are of particular newsworthy quality nor would it appeal to a broad based audience from Instagram. 

While it never pushed itself as a social app since its business model is to sell more filter presets. You can still add photographers to follow and you don't need to shoot on a smartphone device as long as you use VSCO filters to enhance your pictures, that would suffice. 

Now having reviewed the editing functions on the Android app, I would dare say it is a safe bet. you have a variety of filters which are modeled after analog film and other digital presets where you buy and apply on your pictures. It's not rocket science. And would I switch from Snapseed to VSCO for all my editing needs. Probably not. As much as I think the user interface is intuitive, the lag on the app for me is an issue. Making you wait for images to load while the edited previews isn't much of a problem but we are all accustomed to see instant previews and any delays of over 1 second would seem like eternity. And since the editing features are similar to Snapseed, why would I switch over? I would like to see a mobile app that has ISO noise control but presently, only Adobe Lightroom Mobile supports that one feature that is missing from Snapseed.

As an art project, I can see the appeal of VSCO. But art doesn't really sell these days since the market for art in America is like a geriatric person slipping into a coma. Photographic art has a better chance of succeeding in Europe than in America. 

However if you are one of those photographic art people who want a different space to show your wares, you could give VSCO a shot. Instagram is still my goto place for photo sharing while Snapseed will remain my go to app for all image enhancements and editing. Would I switch to a PC to edit my shots? Probably not either.

In today's world of digital photography, you can easily upload your DSLR captured JPG images to Google Photos Cloud and share that to Snapseed on your mobile for editing. Using less to do more is the key here to a mobile photography workflow even if you shoot occasionally on a DSLR. Make of that what you will. 

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Review: Snapseed Versus Adobe Lightroom

So is this the Pepsi Challenge the mobile world is talking about? With much of the image editing happening now on Mobile devices, it makes good sense to have a powerful and yet cheap (read free) image editing program on your smartphone or tablet. 

For the purist, this boils down to two of the most popular, Adobe Lightroom or Snapseed. The other editing apps like PicsArt and Pixlr looks and feels more frivolous. The latter are more Photoshop competitors than image editors. 

Image editing in the purist form allows you to control the balance, color, structure and integrity of the image without the use of layers. Any image editor that adds layering is more Photoshop in scope and for purist, those are for graphic designers. 

To test how this challenge is going to be run, I will be using a Samsung GN 4. So here goes nuthin'.....

Mobile Editing Similarities

First, both Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom have DNG support for raw editing. Ok, to be clear, DNG is probably the closest thing to RAW and as an open standard, it has been adopted by few in the digital camera business. Camera manufacturers prefer to include their own raw formats than rely on one designed by Adobe. Why the fuss? I have no idea.

But for mobile, shooting in RAW is a problem. Without sufficient storage, you risk bloating your SD card and to make matters worst, only selected apps support DNG camera capture. 

Sad to add that even Adobe's Lightroom's camera capture does not support DNG capture. It is instead saved as a JPG file and there is no way to change this in the settings to capture in DNG. Bummer. 

Snapseed will read and edit files in DNG but it doesn't capture it as there is no camera option. Images can only be imported from the Gallery and there is no word if a in-app camera function would be added.

Noise Control Algorithm

Snapseed's weakest link is its inability to control noise, or for that matter allow you to edit and pare down the noise level in a picture. 

This is where Adobe Lightroom steps in to give you a selection of noise control measure as a 'preset'. The unfortunate part was that I could not get any of them to work on the app. It literally died while performing the noise control filter. 

What is the point of giving people this freedom and not having it working out of the box? I have no idea. Maybe because Adobe Lightroom Mobile version wasn't meant to do this as the editing features are really for you to sync your desktop or notebook version of Lightroom photos to your smart device?

Image Editing Operation and UX

One of the killer features of Snapseed is its UX and ease of editing a photo. You swipe to reveal the functions and that operation can be easily be done with a single hand stroke. This is not so for Adobe Lightroom Mobile. 

The User Interface is cluttered, and many of the editing views like 'before' and 'after' previews don't really work. Many times, when you select a preview, it freezes. And the menu for that selected option also gets in the way of your view.

In Snapseed, you can see the previews of your edits right away. 

What's more Adobe has managed to complicate the editing process by giving you way more than what you bargained for like histograms and image curves. For the record, histograms are only useful for large display views to see where the light drops off and how you can adjust that by minute movements of a slider. On a mobile device, this is hardly possible. 

By designing a mobile app that best matches its desktop cousins, Adobe has pretty much created a resource hog of a mobile app.

How Adobe Lightroom became a huge let down

If you start to notice, you'd realize that Lightroom on mobile is really a subset app for you to toy around with images you have on Adobe Cloud. It builds in all this capability to get you to ante up to Lightroom on PC or Notebook. 

And this is what fails it. 

People who use mobile editing aren't interested in editing on PC or Notebook devices. If I have an image which I have shot on mobile, why would I upload it to Adobe Cloud and edit it later on a PC via Adobe Lightroom on Desktop?

Similarly, why would I want to edit an image I shot on a DSLR on a mobile device by downloading a saved image from Adobe Cloud? The logic escapes me. 

People who shoot on mobile are the new casual photographers and if you are going to build a mobile friendly app, it should function as a standalone program and not try to tie itself to the the cloud. 

In Adobe Lightroom Mobile, I have even tried exporting photos to my smartphone Gallery only to have it fail miserably. I would understand if Adobe's excuse that I am running a classic Android device from 10 years ago but to not work on a GN 4 running Android Marshmallow. 

That said, Adobe Lightroom Mobile wanted to be too many things at the same time and lost sight of what a mobile experience is all about. 

This isn't the first time Adobe has fucked up. 

Its previous foray into the mobile app business with illustrator and Photoshop clones were miserable failures and even when they have rebooted their Photoshop app for the masses, it still remains to be seen if they know anything about a mobile experience that is important to smartphone users. 




 

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Review: Pictive and Marked Shot Apps to sell mobile Photos

More players are jumping into the royalty free bandwagon and all you need is a smartphone camera. As long as you have 8 megapixels worth of picture, you're in.

This comes after the relative success of FOAP, EyeEm and Snapwire, three leading mobile stock image agencies which have defied what Instagram wanted to do a long time ago. 

Before it was acquired by Facebook, Instagram was aiming to get into the stock image photo business until users rioted. So that left an opportunity for others to jump in but many just could not capitalize on it. 

The only one to make the leap from photo sharing to image stock agency was Berlin based EyeEm.  The rest followed suit like Scoopshot, Snapcape and Clashshot but these three could not get the same traction of users and buyers. So now we have two more to look at. 

Marked Shot App

Available for both iOS and Android, the business model isn't new. This Singapore startup is selling your photos for US$5 a pop. 

The app is relatively easy to use and they have a very fast image recognition software to boot. A similar system is in use for EyeEm but they don't seem to have implemented it when processing photos uploaded directly but have developed an optional app that does this. 

The concept is the same. The image you upload is recognized by the AI and tags are offered to you to use. Tagging your photos makes it easier for people to search for them via the web browser search on a PC. They also offer a credit based system of purchase where a whole bag of credits will get you a bit further than the usual five a pop.

This option is probably useful for bulk buyers but herein lies the challenge. You need big paying agencies to buy in bulk and as long as you do not have the marketing muscle to sell globally, no one would use your services. 

The other pain is that you have to wait for a photo editor to approve or reject photos for sale on the site. This takes roughly one day. To earn more than what they sell your photos for, you can take part in the Challenges where they offer up to US$50 a pop for the winning image. As usual, you need also provide a model release upon uploading and if you haven't got one, just make sure no person is identifiable in the picture. 

The downside is that you remain relatively unknown, as there is no profile page, no social media contact, nada. Just you and your pictures, and whatever you upload to those crowd sourced projects. 

Pictive App

Another agency from Singapore that caters to both iOS and Android, but they sell each picture for US$10 for both editorial and commercial use photos and it rewards photographers with a tiered pricing system. Each time you sell 10 photos on site, you will get a bump up the royalty reward scale.

You level up every 10 photos of yours we license, increasing the royalties you receive:

• Level 1 - 50% royalties 
• Level 2 - 55% royalties
• Level 3 - 60% royalties
• Level 4 - 65% royalties
• Level 5 - 70% royalties

Pictive offers a better photographer profile versus Marked Shot, and your social media credentials can be included in the contributor profile as well as a portfolio of images that you have shot but not uploaded for sale on the site. 

The app also offers you a chance to shoot for a crowd sourced assignment just like Snapwire and FOAP. This gives you a chance to earn more money in the process and for those who have models to share, your chances of winning these paid project assignments would be slightly higher between US$20 to US$50. 

The only question.... is this worth your while?

As royalty free stock image only gets cheaper, you need to have this figured out before jumping in as winning these time consuming assignments may not be worth the effort. 

Again, we see there is a image parsing algorithm at work that automatically selects useful tags for you to include in your uploaded images. The system is a bit slow and the app feels clunky but it works.Even though that maybe the case, the profile you have on the app feels complete. There are a few subcategories in which to explore pictures and rewards that have been given out to successful photographers. This becomes a yardstick of sorts to measure your own photos against.

Hopefully, the guys behind Pictive would be able to get higher paying clients in the future, which is quite doubtful if you don't have foreign offices in countries where stock image photos are regularly purchased. This is probably the only caveat of the whole mobile stock image industry. 

Pictures are often purchased in bulk within regions that respect the rule of law and this alone shows how the industry is able to weather the storm in the age of digital image theft. Unfortunately, there is no blanket rule for this. Image theft is a global problem and as long as people have a way to obtain pictures without paying for it, then the whole 'cheaper' than the next guy business model isn't going to cut it. 

Clashshot App was one such victim, offering a low US$1 per picture and got a whole load of trashy pictures submitted for sale, in the end, they sold their entire library to Depositphotos. Clashshot no longer solicits direct projects from mobile photographers but uses Depositphotos as a platform to gauge what is popular with buyers.

Which to Shoot For?

If you want to test the waters, there is no harm shooting for both Pictive and Marked Shot. These two are still a work in progress and they will need time to grow. People have sold some pictures on both platforms. 

FOAP does a good job of selling photos at least for me so far. Snapwire is a hit and miss at the same time since you need to level up to be allowed to partake in some of the paid assignments that can pay you a premium of up to US$1500. But you will be taking on a role of a commercial photographer in order to shoot cheaply for brands. 

EyeEm is a bit of a mystery as they are Western centric in marketing so the bulk of the crowd sourced assignments are really more for the Western market. They have their own annual photo exhibition of new talent but it doesn't pay you anything if you win the judges favor. There are challenges where you get offered free stuff, like a new camera or a color photo printer and rarely if they offer any monetary rewards. The most you get is some space on a blog or a photographer magazine which they print. 

But photos contributed to EyeEm can be sold through Getty Images as well as their own photo portal. So this bodes well for those who just want to be listed with Getty Images. 

The crowd source photo market is getting more competitive while buyers are doubling down on cheaper photography rather than to pay for a commercial photographer. This disruptive business will be in vogue for a long time to come as the cost of digital images has yet to hit rock bottom.



 

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Would you Fund a Mobile Stock Image Agency Start Up?

Snapwire, the mobile stock image agency has secured up to US$13 million in new capital from a crowdfunding platform, StartupEngine.com. As an incentive, they have started to offer a FX filter preset pack free to investors. 

So what sort of preset is this? Adobe Lightroom of course. And this is where the irony of it all starts. 

Snapwire branded itself as a mobile stock image agency, with customers logging into the web portal to buy images. I have no idea why it is starting out on Lightroom presets because that is not something I would use if I am shooting on my mobile. Do you smell something fishy in all of this?

There is also no link for people to get a free download of Adobe Lightroom. If you had the choice, of course you would not think twice about downloading the Filter presets but now I have my doubts. 

Snapwire FX is also a place for photographers to purchase these presets if they don't already have them. It cost US$55 a pop. 

I don't know about you but Adobe Lightroom presets can be downloaded from various photog forums and places of interest for free and I am not sure what a few presets like this is worth. 

To me, Snapwire is a business and as a business, you need to have solid business acumen to survive in today's cut throat world of image retailing. 

Death to the Stock Photos

Of late, we have seen quite a fair bit of consolidation. People don't get to sell much photos due to rampant copying thanks largely to search engines. The sharing economy of the digital age is also the free for all age of digital image theft. 

You got a digital photo online, chances are someone already downloaded it, extrapolated it and used it offline somewhere in the world. 

Watermarks? No problem. I have seen websites that were hiring Digital Image editors with the sole purpose of removing watermarks from pictures found on the Internet. 

So where does Snapwire stand?

As a crowd sourced platform for digital imaging, your main strategy is to disrupt the business model of professional photographers who by all accounts, charged thousands for a photo to be shot with models. 

This means, your target would be to kill off professional digital photography in some way and bring down the cost for brands and companies. 

It is no secret that corporations and businesses all pay a large sum of money to use photos online and offline. 

Snapwire's business model should instead be focusing on bringing down that cost in clever ways. As I have previously written, Snapwire had introduced local hiring of photographers for a minimum of US$150 an assignment. 

As for stock photos shot on mobile, they not alone in this shrill game. There are still others like EyeEm, Scoopshot and Foap just to name a few. Some have even developed technology to detect photos, adding keywords automatically for you to choose and making it easier for you to tag photos for buyers to find your images.

Elsewhere, traditional stock image business is morphing into one that is beyond control and they are competing to see who offers the cheapest rates. 

This means that paying customers will have the widest and cheapest choice, wiping out rights managed photos as well as professional photographers who shoot stock image. 

So would you want to fund an agency who at best is racing to the bottom like the rest of them? I think not.

   







 

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