I love looking through my parents’ photo albums.
My dad, like many dads, seems absolutely absent from my childhood, but, in reality, he was always behind his Olympus 0M30 and not in front of it.
He wouldn’t call himself the most accomplished photographer, but what shines in these photographs from the 1980s is the sense of depth and narrative.
There’s a good chance I’m just being nostalgic and sentimental, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the sentiment has to do with the colors.
Many of my childhood photographs are black and white or what I would describe as caramel color.
There is a fair amount of halatian and chromatic aberration, and the black colors are too squashed. Looking at them fills me with that feeling of optimism and hope, almost as if the world is a better place.
I know that’s not true, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.
In many ways, we have lost this. With a large number of photographs taken with our mobile phones every day and very few of them printed, we are satisfied with sub-standard photographs.
They may communicate the facts, but they rarely move us. I have three children and I am always taking pictures of them.
The photographs document their lives, but they don’t move me the way traditional films do. I wanted this feeling back and I did, armed with a beautiful little app called camera.mood.
mood.camera is available in the iOS store only for a 7-day free trial, after which you will need to purchase the app to continue using it, starting at $4.99 / £4.99.
It’s new to the App Store and, at the time of writing, only available to Apple users.
At the core of the creator’s vision is to recreate the look and feel of film, which is achieved by using a custom ProRAW (iPhone Pro 12 or later) image processing process that allows for a higher level of color grading than what is expected. normally it is possible.
The app itself is incredibly simple. That’s one of the biggest selling points. The camera feed is restricted to a smaller part of the screen, giving space and clarity to all the buttons that provide functionality.
This feed even has curved corners to give it the feel of a movie, and the interface colors are black and orange to make it look retro.
Most of the nostalgia is created through the use of color emulations. You could call them filters, although the option to adjust the quality and tone of each provides a welcome level of customization that’s absent in apps like Instagram.
With 15 to choose from, you’re sure to find a style you can’t put down. The Noir emulation with 400 quality and crushed tone has paralyzed me. My kids loved seeing themselves in black and white and for me it adds a depth of story to the photo. Maybe you are shouting at the screen: “All of this is now possible. Just use a photo editing app.” I get it, but there’s something about having it in the app and it certainly helps that these emulations are so ridiculously beautiful.
Another way the app replicates the camera’s cinematic experience is by not applying the emulation until the photo has been taken. Depending on your age, you may remember the days when you had to go to a store to develop your film. Between taking the photographs and developing them, days or weeks may have passed.
You had no idea if you had forgotten to remove the lens cap or not, and you just hoped the photos would turn out well. The experience is not exactly the same; After all, you only have to wait a few seconds to see the adjusted color result. But not being able to see it live on camera creates a nice level of drama and anticipation.
This app has really put the joy back into the process of taking photos on my phone. When I want to take a photo, I now use my creativity to think about the look I’m going for, rather than just capturing events for a record. I’m also taking fewer photos, but with more thought and much better final quality.
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