I'm probably not winning over any new fans for this blog with my continuing cynicism. Sometimes, I can't help it. It's almost as if they draw me and write me this way. That aside, I came up with another potential iPhone photo app. I'm calling it the Turd Froster.

The Turd Froster does what most other iPhone photo apps can also do-- frost turds; photographic turds, that is. (It can also be used, like its many competitors, to process non-turd photos, just in case you were wondering.) The big difference between the Turd Froster and most other iPhone photo apps is simple and basic: It is so named with honesty in mind.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying I don't ever shoot turds. I do. Everyone does. Nature of the beast and all that. And we all probably capture turds more often than we care to admit. But I, hopefully like many of you, try my best NOT to post my turds publicly. I also work hard at not working hard or wasting time frosting turds... unless someone is paying me to frost turds which is a very different thing and usually doesn't qualify as wasting my time... cuz, after all, I'm getting paid to do it.

Anyway...

Snap a photo of almost anything boring and banal with your iPhone -- like so many iPhoneographers seem to routinely and proudly do -- select from the many effects in Turd Froster's arsenal of digital treatments and voila! Your boring, banal, turd of an iPhone snapshot is suddenly and magically transformed (by digitally coating and frosting it) into something that makes the turd look kinda cool... in a kinda cool frosted turd way.

Another disclaimer: Please don't get me wrong-- I'm not saying every photo snapped with an iPhone is a turd. I've seen some very cool and compelling imagery shot with iPhones. Perhaps the cool stuff was so shot because the photographer didn't have another camera conveniently available to shoot with? Maybe using an iPhone was the shooter's first choice? Hard to say. More than likely, the cool and compelling iPhone snaps I've seen were cool and/or compelling because the subject of the photo would be cool or compelling whether it was shot with an iPhone, a point-n-shoot, a dSLR or just about any other image capturing device. Some photographic subject matter just naturally rolls that way.

As you may have already deduced, many iPhone apps are little more than logical, no-brainer, iPhone app extensions of Photoshop's many 3rd party actions and other image processing software. Photoshop, of course, is probably the original photographic turd froster. Again, I'm not saying Photoshop and PS actions and the like are only used to frost turds. They're not! Often, they're used to enhance the visual dynamics and aesthetics of non-turd photography. But, unfortunately, I've seen it used the first way I mentioned much too often. Worse yet, I've seen PS used in a sort of reverse-turd-frosting way. You know, when a decent, perhaps terrific photo is so over-shopped, it devolves from a decent or terrific photo into a turd.

I used to work quite a bit as a video editor. A big plus for being an in-demand video editor is the ability, besides other creative and craft abilities, to use video editing software and other motion-image processing tools in effective ways so as to frost turds. Example: The client hands over footage or a project that is so boring and lackluster or poorly captured that it's obvious to everyone (whether they admit it or not) it's a turd in dire need of frosting. The editor then calls on all his or her turd-frosting skills, much like Sonny Corleone's mortician called on all his skills to make the mobster's bullet-riddled body viewable, to somehow make something out of little or nothing. It might be accomplished with digital effects, editorial style (e.g., quick-cut, MTV-like editing) or, more likely, a combination of both.

Back to the Turd Froster iPhone photo app...

If you're one of those iPhone snappers who seem to think just about anything you point your iPhone's internal camera at, no matter how boring or non-memorable, can be rendered into a fairly cool iPhone snapshot providing the right app is applied to it, the Turd Froster might be for you. You'll still be wrong about your crappy or boring image being anything more than it is but at least, by using the Turd Froster, you're being honest about it.

In this brave, new photographic world that sometimes seems bent on becoming one where the masses of shooters are trying their best to do little more than make photographic silk purses out of sow's ears (courtesy of all the many post-processing tools available to them) the Turd Froster just might be the first honest app available to them. (Hey! "Honest app" almost sounds like "Honest Abe." I gotta remember that when I'm coming up with the marketing and branding for the Turd Froster.)

But here's a better idea: Instead of snapping turds or otherwise boring and banal stuff, look for those truly cool and compelling subjects to shoot. Then, if you still think some photo app's treatments will make your already cool and compelling image even better, go for it!

Okay. I'm gonna try to get out of this cynical mode or mood or whatever it is I seem to be in. I promise my next update will be of a more positive, perhaps helpful, and certainly less cynical nature.

The pretty girl at the top is Kristina. I snapped this one inside a location house with a window behind her and a 5' Photoflex Octodome for my main plus a white reflector, opposite the main, for some gentle fill... as evidenced by the catch lights in her eyes. As always, you can click it to enlarge it.

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