Painting with the Nokia Lumia 1020 by Jen Bracewell
I believe that we have all laughed at the new Nokia commercial with the parents at the recital. Watching them struggle to get a better picture with their phones made me giggle a little as I saw a little of myself in a few of them! Having a phone with a camera in it is pretty cool. Having a phone with a 41 megapixel camera in it passes right by cool and quite possibly screams right by awesome.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 takes photos that are crisp, clear, and gorgeous. The pictures are so large that I can zoom in, crop generously, and still have a great image to work with.
If you are following the Windows Phone Challenge you are aware that there are many wonderfully skilled photographers involved and I predict a multitude of beautiful landscapes, still-lifes and street photography will be produced. To that end I decided to do what I like best and explore the editing capabilities of the phone and do some app stacking for this tutorial, creating (hopefully) a piece of art.
I started with a blurry picture, taken at night. It was almost dark so you can see how well the Nokia’s lens works in low-light conditions. The blur was not an accident, I moved while taking the photo. I haven’t quite mastered its slow-shutter capabilities yet. I thought this image already had a cool look to it so I decided to see if I could turn it into something interesting. My first step was to crop the image square.
Next, I added some blur. This is under the “Artistic” category. I chose 75% and then used the “paint original” brush to unblur some of my image.
I wanted to change the color of my image. I went to “Recolor” under “Top Effects” I chose the default filter.
Next I added some grunge. Under the “grunge” heading I used the “dirty” filter.
Back to the app’s homescreen and chose the icon that looks like a rainbow. Here I did a little finger painting. I chose the “sketch” brush and a reddish-orange color and drew a circle around my image. I then chose the “furball” brush and a slightly oranger red and went over it.
The next step was a little bit of distortion. I used the “pinch” effect, which applied to my whole image. Again, I used the paint original eraser to remove some of it from the center of my image.
I decided to finish the image in Hipstamatic Oggl. I am SO happy that this app is available on the Lumia! It’s a favorite for shooting and for editing. I chose the Loftus lens and Robusta film, for a little blur, warm desaturation and an interesting frame.
That’s it! I was pretty happy with the results, an interesting abstracted little person.
I hope you like this little bit of Windows Phone art. I am really enjoying learning the capabilities this camera and the editing apps available to Windows Phone users.
