2024 01 16

Night street scene in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

I came across this scene while walking home and snapped a few images with my Ricoh. It’s just a simple little scene but I love the odd tree, ambient night lighting and gritty noise from the high ISO.

THEN, a few months later, I again came across this scene and immediately thought back to this image I had made. Instead of making yet another image with my Ricoh, I pulled out the iPhone, opened a new app I’ve been using called Lapse, and snapped a few new images.

I must say: I’m a bit obsessed with this app. After getting over the initial data grab app-trickery bullshit that makes me want to throw my phone into a river, Lapse surprised me! The way they implemented the camera is fun and impressive; the concept being that your phone is a “disposable film camera” so you get the expected filter look, which is nice, but you also get a really well-blended strobe look from the camera flash (which is something I’d always fully avoided using on my phone camera even in the darkest environments). It reminds me of my old Yashica T3 film camera and the many years I spent shooting nightlife strobe photography. Of course, it’s still digital and still a highly compromised phone image, but the convenience and social factors are hard to compete with.

I bought my Ricoh, which I keep in my pocket at all times, as a way to get away from solely using my phone camera out of sheer convenience and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve recently made, however, this app might have me once again using my phone camera more than I’d like to.

-Clayton (@claytonhauck on Lapse)

Lapse app version of the above scene made a few weeks later than the original above. © Clayton Hauck