I've been a fan of iPhone photography for years but recently I've felt disappointed in the direction it's taken. Despite the underlying technology improving, to my eye, the photos the iPhone produces look increasingly artificial, over-processed and ultimately, lack character. I have tried many of the existing filter apps in an attempt to remedy this, but the editing process always took me out of the moment, overwhelming me with filter options and sapping my creativity.
This is why I decided to build mood.camera. My goal, to create a streamlined photography app that echoed the point and shoot film experience. I focussed on three guiding principles for the project:
1. Produce characterful photos.
I wanted the photos produced by mood.camera to look like nothing else produced by a phone camera. They needed to have a real sense of physicality and charm.
2. Bring joy to the photographer.
Each shot should carry an element of anticipation and of the unknown, echoing the experience of a film camera.
3. Straight-forward to use, but with depth.
It was important that I included enough control to allow creativity but kept the point-and-shoot essence of mobile photography at it’s core.
I started working on a prototype in October 2023 and immediately felt excited to use my iPhone for photography again. Over the next few months I spent evenings and weekends working towards a beta. After the beta launched on Reddit it quickly gained a small but engaged audience, whose feedback helped me fine tune the experience Over 150,000 photos later and mood.camera was ready for launch.
