I only took my iPhone 4s with me on this visit to Nairobi, Kenya, and Saint Monica Children’s Home with Mothers Fighting For Others. It was taken during a period of time when I was only posting mobile photos here and drawn to apps like Hipstamatic. This old photo popped up among the suggested posts here a few days ago. The distorted image is typical of photos posted during that period. The quick capture from the car window was cropped square, for Instagram, and overly edited to appear like an old analog image. In retrospect, it didn’t come close to doing the scene justice. So I found the original, unedited iPhone image and decided to take a different approach.

The original, shown just above, is typical of the iPhone 4s. Shadows were dark and colors somewhat muted. There’s not a lot of dynamic range in these base files, but enough to do a better job of illustrating the moment than I did in December of 2011. The first photo in this post is a fairly “standard” edit for me with an old photo now. I first took the old iPhone original into Topaz Gigapixel AI. The goal is to increase the resolution, yes, and also to get rid of some of the JPEG artifacts that exist in the shadows of that original file. Those artifacts are exposed when you begin to push light around. Once I had that file, I was able to get a bit more from the image.

I’m happy I went through my fake analog photography period. It brought me back to a creative side of myself and helped to develop the love I now have for learning as much as I can and shooting as often as I can. I still love playing with variations on what might be analog themes, like the black and white treatment above, only I’m fully in control. [ approximate location ]