I find mobile photography appealing due to its spontaneous and unpretentious nature. Taking photos with my iPhone allows me to express myself, and I consider my photos to be a visual diary of my emotions, dreams and desires.
— Christina Nørdam Andersen
Mobile phone cameras have taken street photography to a whole new level; the devices are portable, small and easy to handle, and render the photographer virtually invisible, allowing for more authentic, compelling captures. Let’s talk mobile street photography, one of the most popular forms of smartphone photography, with three stellar artists whose work is very well known and admired in the mobile photography world: Christina Nørdam Andersen, Thomas Kakareko and Dilshad Corleone.
My first advice is to keenly observe your surroundings and keep an open mind for what you might find. Be susceptible to what is in front of you and allow yourself to submerge into the scene emotionally. When something or someone interesting catches your eye, consider the composition of the photo—how the background and perspective can contribute to the story you wish to tell with your photo. A tip of a more practical nature is to keep your mobile camera open and ready to shoot in your hands, ready for when that shoot might present itself to you. Discretion is key in street photography and I find that it is helpful to observe your subject through the mobile phone screen rather than establish eye contact. My motto is: Shoot first and think later.
You should always keep your lens clean. I had to delete so many great photos because of this issue. Be sure to carry an additional battery pack with you. You will regret it if you find an interesting moment and your phone just dies. But mainly you should just try to enjoy the whole process of taking street photos. Even after almost three years of shooting in Berlin, I still keep finding places that I’ve never been to before. Keep smiling and shoot away.
Never Let Me Go - “I followed the girl into the mist, which creates a beautiful and surreal backdrop. I like capturing those rare moments when people lose their self-consciousness.” —Christina Nørdam Andersen
Another State of Mind - “I remember being in a particular state of mind when I took this photo and I tried to translate my feelings into the edit. I played with focus and contrasts—using the Focusoid app to apply blur, Noir to create the contrast, and Lo-Mob to add the analogue effect.” —Christina Nørdam Andersen
Noir is my go-to app. I like that it is a fairly simple app that can be used to create excellent classic-looking monochromes. It’s easy to use with few controls that give you a great degree of control. There are three dials for contrast, outer exposure and inner exposure. You can also add a vignette effect exactly where you want to and thereby draw attention to one element of the photo. Snapseed is another favorite app that I highly recommend as an all-around app. It has many powerful photo-correction tools, localized adjustments and many enhancing effects/filters such as Drama, Grunge, Vintage, Center Focus, Frames and Tilt Shift. I would like to highlight the VSCO Cam app, which offers several predefined effects for both black-and-white and color photos. The beautiful effects emulate the emulsions and grains of real 35mm film brands like Kodak, Fuji and Ilford.
During the last three years, I have probably tried them all out. I’ve been experimenting a lot and always use many apps to reach the desired effect. When I first started taking mobile photos I used Hipstamatic, but after a while I started to get bored and wanted to have more control over my pictures. My next obsession was Filterstorm, with its endless editing possibilities. But there’s only one app I truly fell in love with, and that is Noir. It’s perfect for vignetting and I love the black-and-white tones it produces. Today I mainly work with Snapseed and VSCO Cam because they are powerful and easy to use.
I’m trying to go minimal, so at the moment I’m keeping it very basic and using Snapseed a lot. Oggl, an app from Hipstamatic, is also playing an important part in my photography lately. So these two would be my very favorite at this point in time, but it will all change soon, I know it.
“I knew there was something here. All those sparks; I just wanted to catch it!” —Dilshad Corleone
“This was shot in Barcelona in an open-space park without grass, where dogs and their owners walk freely. I remember this dog was interested in what I was doing and came to check if I had snapped him to his liking.” —Dilshad Corleone
“Mobile photography is the easiest and still most rewarding way for me to do what I love. I want to capture real emotions and expressions and my iPhone is my tool.” —Thomas Kakareko
“Thanks to mobile photography I finally found a way to express myself in a creative way.” —Thomas Kakareko