I have almost never added a filter or effect to photos in Photoshop but I can’t get enough of them on my iPhone. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s easy on the phone. You buy an app and play.

Photo processing on the desktop seems serious: industry standard software, large images, big monitors. An iPhone is fun. You can play with it anywhere and be influenced by anyone and anything including your neighbour’s dog. Or your neighbour. 

I shot the above photo sitting on the front step after a run, then ran it through CrossProcess and then a couple of times through PicGrunger and then SquareReady. I did some other tinkering but this isn’t a tutorial. This is about moving away from the laptop for a while to learn a different, more immediate kind of photography.
I didn’t do it all on the front step.

In fact, I don’t remember where I did the rest, but that’s the point. It could have been anywhere: waiting in line at Tim Horton’s, on the porch of the cottage, in the park, in the dark, on the toilet.

Some people text constantly in every nook and cranny of their day: me, I’ve started to photo process. And that’s the other odd metamorphosis: I’ve started to want to share my images, to become part of a community, to like a lot of people’s creations. I want to connect with the other people who are out snapping photos like crazy and processing them on the spot.

And I’m not interested in how people make their images. I’m more interested in the story of the photo, in the where and the who and the then what.

Photography has suddenly become more a part of the world as it is right this moment.