UIScape

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of a picture created through photography, what would these thousand words actually describe? A photograph is most often a static depiction of a scene at one specific moment in time. Although with modern cameras it is relatively easy to capture all the visual detail of a scene, this is rarely sufficient for portraying the context in which this scene was set, which is usually left to the imagination of the viewer.

A group of researchers from the Future Applications Lab at the Viktoria Institute in Sweden set themselves to changing this status quo by proposing context photography, a novel way of representing within the photo itself the context in which it was taken. In their experimentations, they chose two parameters to represent context: camera movement and ambient sound. Their prototype “context camera”, implemented using a camera-phone, monitors these parameters in real time and feeds them into a set of visual effects that are applied to the picture as is it shot with the phone camera. This process is adjustable by the photographer so that, for example, one can chose to associate the effect of colour shadows with the presence of high-pitched ambient noise. Some examples of the resulting photographs are visible in the following pictures:

In their latest research paper published in the 2006 NordiCHI conference, the researchers describe the reactions of photographers who used context camera-phone prototypes for a period of six weeks and submitted a total of around 300 pictures. Although each participant’s experience with context phtography was unique, possibly reflecting their different attitudes to personal photography in general, some common themes did emerge from the participants’ photographs and comments

First, as with many innovative interactive technologies, context photography has found unexpected uses. Although it was probably conceived as a way of capturing the existing context, it was found that users would attempt to artificially “create” some context in order to trigger the contextual effects. For example, some users would scream if there were no ambient sounds, or would try moving the camera in different ways if there was no natural movement in the scene. In doing so, they turned the contextual parameters into yet another input in the creating process of photography.

However, users would not generally agree how these inputs should affect the resulting image. The aesthetics of the visual effects applied by the context camera proved to be “highly subjective and […] a matter of personal taste”. Although each photographer could adjust the visual effects through some calibration process, some found this process complicated or ambiguous. The researchers themselves concede that “designing effects to suit a high number and wide range of users becomes a challenging task”.

Although it may take some time for context photography to be optimised for the everyday user, Apple’s iPhone is already pioneering the use of sensors that measure ambient light, body proximity and acceleration, and could become an interesting platform for context photography experimentation. How about a mobile, context photography-based version of Apple Photo Booth effects?