Seeing faces
The improvement in quality of phone cameras and the phones’ ability to run powerful image processing apps has started to open some interesting creative possibilities. One recent discovery for me has been Hipstamatic and the Tintype add-on that allows you to emulate daguerreotypes. The app claims to use the iPhone’s built-in face recognition to accentuate your subject’s facial features and blurs out everything else. Since iPhone’s facial recognition also works for two-dimensional faces like those printed on posters or painted on walls, you can exploit it to get some unique cityscapes:
Old houses in Amsterdam are often adorned with reliefs of faces, the TinType effect works on them too.
I got some interesting results while working with faces of animals too:
And a face need not be perfect for this to work.
Us humans are sometimes fooled into seeing faces in abstract patterns — an evolutionary trait that iPhone’s face detection has somehow inherited. This building looked to me like a giant, bespectacled witch with a conical hat (Bewitched anyone?). The iPhone doesn’t quite agree, but it does try:
My biggest gripe with phone cameras is the lack of depth of field and with apps like these I am able to scratch that itch somewhat. I am sure it’s only a matter of time before the software and improved optics allow you to emulate the depth of field and bokeh of SLR lenses right on your phone.
p.s. In another news, we finish two years in Amsterdam today. When we had landed here in April’11 the hotel driver who had come to pick us up, was quite amused at our over-preparedness for dealing with the cold. The spring had come early that year (or was it on time?). The morning was pleasantly cool and a visit to Keukenhof just a day later was a memorable one. Had we been arriving this year, we would appear underprepared. The trees are still bare and the famous tulip show at Keukenhof has been nothing short of a disaster. It was cold and cloudy in Amsterdam today and it drizzled steadily throughout the day. While most people here are sick of the prolonged winter, I am quite content for it to drag on. Had they spent 25 years of their lives in 45ºC Delhi summers, they’d understand.
p.p.s. Accompanying music: A cheesy techno hit from the 90s - 2 Unlimited - Faces.
Where we live
We are about to finish two years in Amsterdam so the posts in the coming days will be looking back at our time here. Just this afternoon I was discussing with the wife how she found the apartment where we currently are. I was too busy figuring out work to play an effective role in house hunting, so I had left the decision in her able hands. Besides, I had picked our apartment in Bangalore during my bachelor days and we had simply stayed on there after marriage and it was only fair that this time I would get to live in a place of her choice.
I knew that we weren’t all that keen on living in one of those 100+ year old houses in the inner canal ring of the city because of their steep staircases, the horror stories of mice and the high costs of keeping them warm. The wife was looking for something clean, modern and new. She came here right after having viewed a really crappy place, and this apartment; with its modern construction, sunlight streaming through its huge wall-to-floor windows and the view of the river IJ, was not only the perfect foil, it also checked all boxes. She made a video of the house, caught me at lunch and got me to see the place that very evening.
The apartments in this area are quite new and are devoid of any sentimentality about being in the same city as the centuries old gabled canal houses. They are quintessentially 21st century in their design (with straight lines and boxy shapes) and choice of construction material (glass, concrete, steel dominate). The wife finds some of these buildings ugly but they are practical and more comfortable (elevators, double glazed, sound-proof windows and all that jazz) than their less modern counterparts which makes it very easy for her to gloss over their cookie-cutter looks. I am much less apologetic about their looks:
Photoblog: Photo #10
Here are two more pictures from Milan that continue the theme of people walking into your frame:
I was standing in the covered corridor opposite this building waiting for the constant stream of people to clear for a few seconds. After a few attempts at getting a people-free picture, it became clear to me that it wasn’t going to happen. I figured that I might as well include people into my composition.
It felt a bit like looking at the opening act of a play with a an elaborate set. Looking at these pictures two months later, makes Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition loop in my head.
p.s. A version without any people:
Photoblog: Photo #9
I have some pictures from Milan that didn’t quite fit into yesterday’s travelogue. I usually avoid people in pictures, but sometimes they just walk into the frame and set the shot up quite nicely for you:
