While experimenting with my cell phone camera in Berlin, I decided to try a few “special effects” photos, since that’s such a common thing that people do when taking photos with cell phone cameras. I realized when I looked at the photos later that most of the ones I that I thought were at all “successful” as images all were done with a particular effect called a “vignette”. A vignette style adds a feathered dark or light oval border as a sort of framing effect to the subject(s) in the image.

In the gallery below you’ll see a few examples. All were taken at the hotel, some on the rooftop (you’ll recognized the pieces of the panorama from yesterday, one at dinner, and a couple in our room. In addition to the vignette, these images also show experimentation with adding funky color effects or B&W settings either before or just after taking the photo. Plus, at least one has a black border that is supposed to evoke the idea of  “old style film borders”, or something like that. These cell phone camera apps have all manner of “nostalgic”  effects you can add. There’s even an effect to add “scratches” and “tears” to the image, to make it look like it’s an old photo you found shoved in a drawer or something. Who would have thought that this would be a desired aspect to a photo, eh? I haven’t been inclined to add that particular effect  to a photo myself, however I’m old enough to have a bunch of real ones like that from years ago…

BTW, the two photos that have the “soccer ball” Berlin TV Tower have vignettes that I added later on my computer, and not on the cell phone. I thought it would be fun to show it’s not just a feature of cell phone apps to do that; rather, it can be done in any “digital darkroom” program, too. I rarely do it normally, but it seemed to go with the other ones today.

Anyway, enjoy.