Mobilography

It’s a clumsy word, but it’s catching on. Mobilography is taking photographs on your mobile phone. Not just simple snaps or selfies; pictures that go beyond the basics and use your iPhone like you would an expensive camera. Mark Frost shows us how.

- Mark Frost

It goes by many names including: mobilography, iphoneography and smartphone photography and it cannot be ignored. The mobile phone has now become more than a mere telecommunication device. It has transformed into a smartphone, or as more people refer to it, a camera phone. The boom in sales of smartphones, such as the iPhone, has been huge. At first, it was just a mobile telephone, but as the technology advanced, it became a gaming device, social media hub and a camera too. You only have to take a look at a busy high street, or any large gathering of people at an event and you see a forest of hands holding up their phones to record the moment.

Sales of iPhones have increased and this has had a knock-on effect in the world of the digital camera. The compact digital is feeling the effects of the rise of mobile tech and in recent years, demand for an entry-level digital camera has waned. Casual photographers have turned to their camera phone, a device that is now so ingrained in our culture, it’s hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. Whilst images taken on a camera phone cannot yet rival the quality of DSLRs, the leaps in technology being made have closed the gap considerably. In reality, the quality is not even close just yet, but that’s not the idea behind mobilography. The quality of the shot is secondary to the concept of just going out, having a little fun and getting creative with a device that should be intended for making phone calls and which now has an avid following in mobile photography circles.

So many choices