The document discusses the impact of smartphones on photography and design, emphasizing the shift from traditional cameras to mobile devices and the democratization of design practices through open collaboration. It highlights the evolution of social media platforms like Instagram, which allow users to share and curate images, fostering a new aesthetic movement. The conclusions stress the importance of social interactions and collaborative strategies in the modern design landscape.

1. Smartphones and
open, collaborative
image making
Art + Design Symposium
Dunedin School of Art, 16-17 October 2015
Dr Mark McGuire
Design, Dept. of Applied Sciences, University of Otago
email: markhtmcguire@gmail.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mark_mcguire
Blog: http://markmcguire.net/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mark_mcguire/
https://instagram.com/mark_mcguire/

2. Collaboration
(Shared goals)
Models of Open Art/Design Practices
Cooperation
(Shared Interest)
Crowdsourcing
(Gathering)
Dissemination
(Spreading)

3. > The production of film cameras essentially ended in 2006.
> Sales of DSLR cameras declining since 2010.
> Digital cameras are not connected and lack the apps that enable sharing.
> Apple, Samsung and other top smart phone makers are “not just trying to edge
out stand-alone cameras; they’re trying to destroy them and own their space”.
(Arthur, 13 April, 2015)
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/13/cameras-slrs-dslr-overtaken-by-smartphones-charles-arthur

4. The Best Camera Is The One That's
With You: iPhone Photography by
Chase Jarvis (2009)
“Inherently, we all know that an image isn’t
measured by its resolution, dynamic range,
or anything technical. It’s measured by the
simple—sometimes profound, other times
absurd or humorous or whimsical—effect
that it can have on us.”
The iPhone has “given us the opportunity
[…] to capture moments and share them
with our friends, families, loved ones, or
the world at the press of a button. It’s the
moment. The little snippet of life unfolding
in front of your lens.”

5. https://www.flickr.com/cameras Accessed 4 Oct. 2015

6. > Smart phones were able to capture images
as good as the best $2,000 DSLR cameras
from about six years earlier.
> Faster processing could ameliorate the
limitations of the smart phone cameras
resulting from their small lens and image
sensor.
> Sales of phones with cameras 13 x sales of
dedicated cameras.
> More money is likely to be invested in
improving the technology of increasingly
popular smart phones than cameras.
(Dean Holland, 2 Jan., 2014)
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/5533410947/smartphones-versus-dslr-
versus-film Accessed 1 Oct. 2015

7. Technical, social and economic
developments in the Internet age
have enabled an “aesthetic
movement of collaborism” and a
democratisation of design.
— Gerritzen and Lovink
Everyone is a Designer in the Age of Social Media (2010), p. 24

8. “[L]ike literacy after the printing
press, design is becoming too
important to leave to a cloistered
few. For design to become more
relevant in a world like this, we
must find ways of expanding design
practice to amateurs and to
communal practice.”
— Clay Shirky
Gerritzen and Lovink, Everyone is a Designer in the Age of Social Media (2010), p. 24

9. Open design is developing out of a
culture of sharing and reciprocity in
which designers and end users connect
directly, without the need for
intermediate organizations, retailers,
publishers or marketers.
Powerful digital tools, expert advice
and high quality work are now freely
available online. Anyone to participate
in online conversations, activities and
spaces, regardless of professional
title or status.
— Open Design Now: Why design cannot remain exclusive (2011).
edited by Bas van Abel et al.

10. Instagram
> Launched in 2010, sold to Facebook in April
2012 for US $1 billion
(Yahoo! paid US $35 M for Flickr in 2005).
> Mobile photo & video (15 sec.) sharing app
(sends to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr)
> Hashtags added Jan. 2011, 15 sec. videos
supported from June 2013 (competing with
Twitter’s Vine), Direct added in Dec. 2013
(competing with Snapchat), non-square images
supported from Aug. 2015
> 400 million users, 75% outside the US. (Sept.
2015)
http://blog.instagram.com/post/129662501137/150922-400million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram 4 Oct. 2015

11. Joanna Zylinska
> We have all become “distributors,
archivists and curators of the light traces
immobilised on photo-sensitive surfaces”.
> Low cost digital storage and digital
networks have “changed the very ontology
of the photographic medium.”
> Photographs now “function less as
individual objects or as media content to be
looked at and more as data flows to be
dipped or cut into occasionally”.
(Joanna Zylinska, 2015) Photomediations: An Open Book
http://photomediationsopenbook.net/data/index.html#ch2

12. https://instagram.com/lordemusic/ Accessed 4 Oct. 2015

13. https://instagram.com/p/7tB-wYNlUU/?taken-by=lordemusic Accessed 4 Oct. 2015

14. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/11028015/National-Gallery-relents-
over-mobile-phones.html
By Hannah Furness 12 Aug. 2014

15. “Instagram is fast becoming a key platform for advertising art.”
https://www.artsy.net/article/newlin-tillotson-smartphone-exhibitions-why-galleries-are-taking-their 28 Aug. 2014

16. Dunedin School of Art
https://instagram.com/p/8wuWGSsLPO/?taken-by=dunedin_school_of_art Accessed 13 Oct. 2015

17. #MobilePhotoNow (Feb 6 - March 22, 2015)
> Largest mobile photography exhibition organized by a museum
> 45,000 images via Instagram by 5,000 photographers, 89 countries
> Exhibition featured > 320 images, 240 photographers 40 countries.
http://www.columbusmuseum.org/mobilephotonow/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

18. “To submit images, participants had to use the hashtag
#mobilephotonowcma in addition to the themed #JJ hashtag.
There were four themes spaced out over four weeks
announced on the #JJ community feed: #jj_cma_street,
#jj_cma_portrait, #jj_cma_community and
#jj_cma_blackandwhite. Mr. Kuster and Josh Johnson sifted
through some 45,000 and narrowed it to 650.”
From Smartphones to Museum Walls, New York Times, Feb. 10 2014
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/from-smartphones-to-museum-walls/?_r=1#

19. Adam Elkins (had a portrait included in #MobilePhotoNow.)
> Columbus barista, 27-year-old amateur photographer.
> Hosts real-life “InstaMeet” gatherings to connect with users.
> His iPhone’s worldview is global.
> “It’s wild; I post a photo now, and I get 100 ‘likes’ within a few minutes”
Museum exhibit focuses on pervasiveness of mobile photography. Columbus Dispatch, 5 Oct. 2015
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2015/02/01/01-candid-captures.html

21. https://instagram.com/jjcommunity/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

22. https://instagram.com/p/8GpoIrtlZx/?taken-by=jjcommunity Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

23. http://tagitjj.com/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

24. http://mobilephotoawards.com/4th-annual-mobile-photography-awards-winners/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

25. https://instagram.com/nothing_to_worry_about/ 1 Oct. 2015

27. Patricia Lay-Dorsey documents her life with Multiple Sclerosis
https://instagram.com/p/8s-_MJP1qp/?taken-by=patricialaydorsey 12 Oct. 2015

28. Patricia Lay-Dorsey documents her life with Multiple Sclerosis
https://instagram.com/p/8s-_MJP1qp/?taken-by=patricialaydorsey 12 Oct. 2015

29. https://instagram.com/mattcrump/ 25 Sept. 2015

30. “#candyminimal is a movement in mobile photography
known as candy-colored minimalism, which I started in
2014. To date, Instagrammers have tagged over 80,000
photos with #candyminimal.”
— Matt Crump http://www.mattcrump.com/guide 24 Sept. 2015
> Capture a simple composition against a clear background
> Crop, leaving plenty of negative space
> Filter: adjust hue, brightness, and saturation (Diptic for iOS),
layer and experiment with filters (PicTapGo, VSCOcam, etc.)

31. https://instagram.com/explore/tags/candyminimal/ 24 Sept. 2015

32. https://instagram.com/misvincent/ 12 Oct. 2015

33. https://instagram.com/explore/tags/fantasy_friday_74/ 12 Oct. 2015

34. https://instagram.com/p/8nj-7Zveyi/?tagged=fantasy_friday 12 Oct. 2015

35. https://instagram.com/minimalism_world/ 24 Sept. 2015

36. https://instagram.com/p/79O2tzGlH8/?taken-by=minimalism_world 23 Sept. 2015

37. https://instagram.com/streetkiwi/ 12 Oct. 2015

38. https://instagram.com/p/8ruvnsJT08/?taken-by=streetkiwi 12 Oct. 2015

39. https://instagram.com/diagonal_symmetry/ 2 Oct. 2015

40. https://instagram.com/p/8TYez_yaj2/?taken-by=diagonal_symmetry 2 Oct. 2015

41. https://instagram.com/24hourproject/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

42. https://instagram.com/explore/tags/24hr15/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015

43. “These are the photos from the 2015 Edition of the #24HourProject which are part of
the exhibit in Caracas Venezuela. Thanks to all the participants who shared their
city story one photo per hour during 24 hours. Curated by Renzo Grande”
http://www.24hourproject.org/caracas-2015/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
#24hr15

44. “So, every hour, images filtered in from 650 cities around
the world, including pictures documenting Albuquerque
nightlife and the early morning hustle of a Hong Kong fish
market as well as a father and daughter sitting together as
they sell flowers on a Tehran street.
“We wanted to see the differences throughout the world,
but also the blending and mixing of ethnicities within a
single city,” said Smotherman, a developmental disabilities
social worker. “Street photography highlights [human
nature] by capturing the unplanned but not unnoticed.”
Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2015
http://www.latimes.com/local/moments/la-me-scm-lessons-learned-the-24-hour-
project-2015-20150325-story.html Accessed 4 Oct. 2015
#24hr15

45. Conclusions
> It’s not the wood (resource, artefact), it’s the
singing around the camp fire (social).
> People value designed experiences that
blend the best of online and offline.
> Develop open strategies that integrate
collaboration (in groups), cooperation (over
networks) + crowdsourcing & dissemination.