Spotlight: Photographer Mike Clare

The name's Clare. Mike Clare.

Photographer Mike Clare is just like the rest of us: he’s a complete iPhone addict. But what makes Mike’s iPhone addiction so special is that he’s actually managed to find genuine business uses for his favourite device, giving him free license to spend just about his entire day tapping away on it. Jealous much? Yeah, thought so. Mike is a photographer who uses the iPhone in almost every aspect of his business, including the photographs themselves. In his own words, Mike shares with us his love for iPhone and gives us some tips for apps that can make the most of your snaps as well as organise your busy lives.

“OK, I’ll admit it, I like gadgets… but with a qualifying – ‘only when they are useful’. There was always a certain excited anticipation when Q handed James Bond something cool and said “now, James, this could be useful out in the field” – you knew that there was certainly going to be an event that could only be circumvented by that gadget.

As a freelance commercial photographer I was immediately taken by the iPod Touch as a portable photo viewer – portfolios on the go! The fact that I was able to check email, browse the web, check my diary, view all my contacts, listen to music & watch movies were just icing on the cake – it was a pocket-sized marvel.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time hanging out in forums frequented by people who’d discovered how to  ’jailbreak’ the iPod Touch & get it to do even more stuff. I was soon adding non-Apple apps & customising the look of my device… but still carrying a cell phone & a small digital camera to record family events, use as a visual diary or scout locations for a job. I waited for a few weeks after the iPhone 3G was launched in NZ and then bought one to essentially replace three gadgets (iPhone, camera & iPod), and often it also replaced my laptop for light-duty use.

With the improvements/refinements of the 3GS I felt justified upgrading to the new hardware (a good price on TradeMe for the 3G helped) so I made a midnight visit to the Vodafone Online store on release day and it arrived the next day – gotta love that never-ending upgrade path. My job means I am asked to shoot photos for brochures, advertisements, web sites, etc., so I might be required to find the perfect coffee cup to shoot next to a client’s product, or locate a suitable tree for a model to lean against – so of course the iPhone comes in very handy for these scouting missions. I used to travel around with a point & shoot digital camera, download the images then email them to the client (and sometimes still do).

Don't try this at home!

Occasionally I would use my Motorola cell phone to scout with, but although’ it took pretty good photographs & actually had more controls over the look of the shots than the iPhone, it’s screen was pretty small & it had a cumbersome interface. I was happy enough with the 2 megapixel camera on the 3G (the first digital camera I bought in 1999 was 2 mgpxl, cost $2,500, and was able to produce images for printed brochures & ads) – but I wasn’t happy with the lack of exposure control.

The 3GS with it’s ‘touch to focus’ feature more importantly also biases the exposure based on the chosen area, so the user has quite a bit of control over the look of the shot – tap on a dark area to lighten the shot or a light area to make the exposure a bit darker. The ability to focus down to 10cm is a great feature also – I can now copy business card details, shoot close-ups of stuff & use the app Cyclops to ‘scan’ a barcode & check it’s listing on Amazon. Apart from the features, as the saying goes “the best camera to capture a scene is the one you’ve got with you”, and I’ve always got the thing with me.

If I’m out searching for props & find 3 coffee cups that I want the client to see, it’s great that in OS 3.0 I can choose all 3 (or more) images to email to the client, and if I don’t want them down-sized when they’re sent, then I can select the images, choose to copy them, paste them into an email, and they’ll be sent at full resolution. Nice feature. I’m lucky to have a brother who understands the more esoteric background operations of what computers do, so he transferred my business domain name email account to Google Apps, and now I have access to all my email folders when I’m out and about.

I’m also impressed that he’s got 2 apps written & selling on Apple’s App Store, so I’ve suggested he write an application that I could use in my business (when he’s not playing with Android stuff & sticking pins in a Steve Jobs doll). Last year I decided to join the bloggers of the world (hell, we’re all so important these days!) and try to maintain a blog with content totally generated on the iPhone. It’s been a
fun creative outlet to shoot something, maybe edit it on the phone, add a few words & email it straight to the blog.

There are so many apps available now (perhaps part of the downside of the App Store is the sheer quantity) that it’s hard to know where to start with them. I’ve got a screen full of different photography-related apps but the two I find the most useful are CameraBag & PhotoFX. With these you can quickly add a cool retro effect to a photo, or maybe crop, alter the colours, add a graduated filter or some gritty looking grain….like having Photoshop in the palm of your hand.

Pixel Perfect hue change

Other apps I use (besides the Calendar & Maps which are great), are Air Sharing for having pdf’s, high-res image files & other documents/files with me, Fast Add for a much quicker way to add someone’s name & number into the address book than Apple’s multi tap method, Contacts by Number has been handy to ‘reverse look-up’ people in my address book when I find a number written on a scrap of paper or want to check who I made calls to from my phone bill. Remote is handy to control the computer’s iTunes functions from the next room (sometimes the kids need their music choice ‘adjusted’ via stealth mode).

I have actually used one of the myriad ‘Torch’ apps – both to find things dropped in the car at night, and as a light source in photos. I use National Bank’s app to check account details, FaceBook, Skype, Sketches, RoadTrip lite (to track fuel consumption on my scooter), and a sound-activated timing app called Shot Timer at the shooting club I belong to. Since OS 3.0 I’ve used the APN changer at unlockit.co.nz to stop unexpected data connections, and now being able to tether to the laptop to use my 3G connection when I haven’t got wi-fi is great (and one less reason to jailbreak the phone). Most of my online use of the device is done via wi-fi so I’ve opted to use Vodafone’s casual data in conjunction with a post-paid account I’ve had for many years, but I’m thinking seriously of taking up Hamster’s offer of test driving the XT network.

I keep a few card & board games on the phone, plus Tetris of course for downtime or to keep the family amused. I’ve got Timetable for when the kids need to know how many minutes till the next bus (plug for my bro’s app), mPass for when I get to travel by air (so techno to just bring up the matrix barcode on the screen & hold it under the scanner at the airport – saves printing out that e-ticket).

Probably the coolest app though is something called DSLR Remote – with a light-weight desktop app on your computer, & a camera connected to the computer via USB, (soon to allow Nikon SLR’s a well as Canons) you can use the app on your phone to wirelessly change settings on the camera, take the photo, and review the just-shot image. It works like a charm, but now I just need an assignment from M that requires a suitable spy operation to be handled remotely…

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To jot down this ongoing saga of iPhone appreciation I decided to use Notes in my Mac’s mail app and sync to the iPhone so I could add thoughts & corrections when I was away from the MacBook Pro. I also used a dictionary/thesaurus app while writing, and even used the VoiceOver function available in Accessibility to read out my words – I do like a gadget that I get use out of!”

All photographs in this article are ©Mike Clare, taken with iPhone (except for the first) and used with permission.

– Mike’s website

– Mike’s iPhone photography blog