The Cube at U of M Regents Park shot with the HarrisCamera Doug Coombe
One of the great recent revolutions in photography has been the evolution of camera phones. Cameras on most iPhones and Androids now are almost as good as point and shoots from 5 years ago (OK, the flash is a little wonky at best) and you always have it on you.
The popular mobile phone photo sharing app Instagram has been dismissed by some (including the British paper The Guardian) as not being "real" photography and many complain that the popular photo filters on the app that emulate various vintage film looks somehow amounts to cheating. But many recognize camera phones as the great new photographic tool in spite of their inherent limitations. Annie Liebovitz calls the iPhone "the snapshot camera of today," photojournalists increasingly have used iPhones for assignments in major publications (a recent feature in Hour Detroit by Cybelle Codish on Detroit Architecture was largely shot with an iPhone) and of course they've become ubiquitous at concerts.
There are a host of other apps to assist you in getting that great photo on Instagram - everything from various editing apps to panoramic apps to apps that let you (amateurishly) add kittens to your photos.
One of my favorite apps is the HarrisCamera app that montages 3 photos together taken with a cyan, yellow and magenta filters. This emulates the old film technique of the Harris Shutter which (when used on a tripod) would render anything that moved with a rainbow of color effect - hence the Cube "Endover" outside the Fleming Administration Building at U of M is rendered as fantastic Escheresque cubes of color. Try moving the camera when using the app too for some cool abstract effects.
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