Experiments with digital image capture and computational photography at or over the edge of what is intended by the engineers/designers

Decay is a series entirely focused on crashing an iPhone to generate images that hint at the digital world that exists in the cameras that we all carry with us everywhere. Digital cameras and computational photography are so common that we look at the outputs the same way we look at point and shoot cameras. 

**THE PROCESS**

My body of work is made up of images produced using multiple generations of iPhones and effective manipulation of the panorama feature within the camera software. There are only 4 essential elements: a light source, the photo app, myself and an interlocutor - an arbitrary object that sits in the light path partially occluding the lens. The goal is to crash the processing software, rendering it unable to ‘read’ the image data in the way it was intended.

Images are created by heavily controlling the path through which light gets to the camera lens by reflecting, refracting, or transmitting through the Interlocutor. Over the years I have used my fingers, money, credit card holograms, candy wrappers, the metallic closure of a sake bottle, water bottle wrappers, and whatever else has been at hand including the occasional bar napkin. The process is haphazard and, to some degree, parasitic. It makes full use of an unaltered consumer device with the goal of generating very specific crashes or glitches.


**DECAY SERIES**

Decay is my favorite output; to me, it is the most fun and a has the capacity to produce the most surprising results. Images that depart completely from anything recognizable as photography.

As with most of my work, each shot is composed in a similar way: moving the iPhone and the Interlocutor relative to the available light. There are very similar repeated patterns of movement up and down and left and right with occasional contortions as the pattern of light sometimes reframes the window of available movement in the panorama app. The unique outputs are created by subtle changes in my movement and in the intensity and spectral composition of the light sources relative to the pigment on the interlocutor.

The Decay crash happens in approximately 5% of images over time where the goal is to cause this crash. The odds of the crash are substantially lower when not attempting to cause this result and almost zero in the normal accepted use of the panorama feature. The crash introduces “pixels” into the frame at a lower resolution than the overall frame. These may be quantization blocks in the processing. For whatever the reason these blocks remain and often sit on top of flat color fields. There is a lower probability that parts of the “image” remain, meaning that the background has texture and structure in addition to the pattern of granular pixels. These pixels may be one color or the patterns may be formed by pixels of multiple colors. Sometimes they appear to include faces and creatures.


**ABOUT CELADOOR**

The exploration of hardware with the goal of bending it to another purpose is at the center of my life, both personally and as a core point of interest in my career.

The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. Seeing a tool and imagining a how it can be used in a new way or or given a new purpose.

Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user.

*** NOTE ***

This piece is a companion to Decay - Basel. That piece was available as part of the Frame, a project by Hoxid. The mints were distributed via Tesserart. This image is cropped from the same photograph and should line up on the left edge of Decay - Basel.

Decay - Reflection

Shot while wandering around Brooklyn on an iPhone 13 on March 13th 2025

Wide Camera — 26 mm ƒ1.6
4468 x 6307 pixels

Chocolate wrapper and sunlight

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 8

Shot while wandering around Hollywood on an iPhone 13 on April 4th 2025

Wide Camera — 26 mm ƒ1.6
3483 x 4644 pixels

LCD module salvaged from projector and sunlight

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 7

Shot while wandering around Hackney on an iPhone 14 Pro on January 7th 2024

Wide Camera — 24 mm ƒ1.78
4424 x 4424 pixels

Candy wrapper and sunlight

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 6

Shot in the Pearl District in Portland on an iPhone 14 Pro on July 17 2024

Wide Camera — 24 mm ƒ1.78
4644 x 2028 pixels

LCD module salvaged from projector and sunlight

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 5

Shot in Philadelphia on an iPhone 13 on April 14 2025

Wide Camera — 26 mm ƒ1.6
3014 x 4018 pixels
Cropped

LCD module salvaged from projector and sunlight

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 4

Shot on the way to Los Angeles on an iPhone 13 on May 7 2025

Wide Camera — 26 mm ƒ1.6
3767 x 4516 pixels
Cropped

Fox Family Potato Chips bag (empty) and sunlight
Thanks to Tim and Mary for introducing me to those.  

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 3

Shot while walking around Hackney on an iPhone 14 Pro on June 21st 2024

Wide Camera — 24 mm ƒ1.78
4466 x 3290 pixels

LCD module salvaged from projector and sunlight 

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 2

Shot while walking around Hackney on an iPhone 13 on November 6th 2024

Wide Camera — 26 mm ƒ1.6
3244 x 4644 pixels

Candy wrapper and sunlight 

www.celadoor.xyz

1 edition for sale
1 edition to burn when there is a print
1 ap

Decay (a series and a glitch) 1

Shot on the way to Shenzhen on an iPhone 14 Pro on March 26th 2025

Main Camera — 24 mm ƒ1.78
3628 x 2900 pixels

Water bottle label and sunlight 

www.celadoor.xyz

This mint documents my first print work. It was to be a run of 50 pieces but at least two are missing in the post. There is something strange about printing work that you have lived with digitally for many years however this work is challenging to show digitally as the native resolutions are often into an 8K pixel space. There is something even more strange about folding it up and putting it in an envelope. 

Poster materials: Butcher paper, UV printing, manual folding 

I have been exploring aspects of printing for a few years, but the decision to move forward was challenging. Prior to 2021, my work manipulating the panorama feature of the iPhone was a private and well-insulated endeavor. Even when I started minting on Hic et Nunc I was able to manage the entire process myself. Print meant talking to people about the process and is, ultimately, a step into a thing I know nothing about. 

The decision to make this poster crystalized around the idea of shipping a large format test print to multiple people, which led to concerns revolving around the costs of printing and shipping. The intent was not to make one archival print of an image - although I want to do that. Quantity is the goal, and it is reflected in the choice of materials (butcher paper) and the need to ship them folded (I am genuinely sorry for the creases). There is a comfort and familiarity in butcher paper; Until recently I had concert posters from the 80’s on my walls, and fond memories of unfolding the posters that often arrived in the sleeves of vinyl records. Choosing butcher paper for this project makes it an ephemeral work which will age, possibly yellow, and crack. 

The push to print is a recognition of the fact that work which revolves around pixel level detail and arbitrary rasters is not made for the small screens of social media, and these images often struggle with the fixed resolution of available commercial displays. The scale of this print is its most critical aspect, because it is large enough to have a substantial presence in a room. My hope is that you will embrace the moment this captures, and tack this print to your wall for a while,enjoying the emergent creatures and patterns in the image. 

DECAY (a series and a glitch)
Decay is defined by shots with a specific glitch that yields intricate and disorderly groups of pixels, forming mottled patterns that occasionally fill the entire shot. This glitch first emerged in 2021 as the number of shots I was taking increased and my process crashed the iPhone in a variety of less helpful and more helpful ways. Decay is one specific example. One of my hangups about using consumer hardware is that I hesitated to present an edge case that I could not effectively duplicate. Howver at this point, in the middle of 2025, I am approaching 2000 shots that feature some aspect of this particular glitch. 

This is my favorite output type. It has the capacity to generate the greatest number of surprising results, producing chaotic patterns which deposit pixelated structures at different scales. At times, these look like they could be composed of tiny cubic bits of sand; grainy residue left behind by some core process that has been abandoned by the photo app. 

As with most of my work, each shot is generated in a similar way: moving the iPhone and the interlocutor (the object I am using to block the lens and act as a source of of reflected or transmited light for the sensor) relative to the available light. The shots are taken with similar repeated patterns of movement, up and down, typically moving left or right, with occasional contortions as the pattern of light limits the window of available movement within the panorama app. The unique outputs are created by very subtle changes in that movement, and in the intensity and spectral composition of the light sources relative to the pigment of the interlocutor.

TECHNOLOGY
These images are taken using the stock preintalled iPhone photography app. The images may be cropped or rotated. There is no post processing. All color is as it was when the shot appeared on the screen of the iPhone.

Decay - The Poster

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using a smartphone camera, a light source, and an interlocutor - an object that sits in the light path and controls the light going into the lens through filtering, diffusion, diffraction, and reflection. Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink.

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, and movement) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone. This is best described as a form of generative photography.

About celadoor

The exploration of hardware with the goal of bending it to another purpose is at the center of my life, both personally, and as a core point of interest in my career. The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. Over the last ten years, my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone, creating works which exploit the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing in the iPhone’s camera, and the actions of this one particular user.

hic sunt dracones

Any good title needs to be used multiple times 

Photograph 
Shot in Chengdu on October 4th 2024 with an iPhone 13 running the iOS 17 public beta 
2318 x 4136

A free mint via Tesserart

Stitching One

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using an unmodified iPhone. The photographs exploit the limits of human imagination (in product design) using commodity hardware to create images that look past the familiar photographic output of smart phones to reveal the programming and processing that work invisibly in the background to deliver the food porn and family snapshots that fill our phones. Many images rely on causing failures in the image processing to generate outputs that depart from the visual polish that we expect from computational photography.

All the images are generated in camera (with less than a handful of exceptions) although the images that I post may be cropped or rotated to an ideal cardinal direction.

One of the most interesting things about this process is the total lack of visibility into the computational system that underlies the iPhone’s panorama process. This is functionally a black box that I feed with light and movement attempting to nudge the output towards a specific outcome. At the core of this is the iPhone’s panorama feature. The panorama feature has changed substantially since it was originally introduced and the level of abstraction has increased. These changes accelerated with the iPhone 12 however the parts that intersect with my work were only added as a software update in the fall of 2021. All modern in-camera panorama work falls under the broad heading of computational photography. In 2021 the familiar photo-stitching recipe for panoramas started to give way to elements of photogrammetry and depth data that relied upon the multiple cameras on the new iPhones.

NOTE: I have to make a lot of assumptions about what Apple is doing in the panorama software because they don’t disclose much and because I have only smallest possible interest in methodically reverse engineering how the feature works -- which is no interest.

Early on I felt I had some sense of what the variables are but as I have progressed over the last ten years I have found a number of shots that are simply outliers that may not be reproducible because the number of variables is unknowable.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. This is a natural part of the adoption curve in technology where it becomes possible for a curious la(z)yperson to start to misuse the technology. Darkroom photography. Long exposures. Abusing Polaroids. Intentional camera movement. Point and shoot photography. Digital photography. Circuit bending digital cameras. Circuit bending digital video recorders intended for children. The benign and beautiful exploitation of image file formats on home computers. This tracks to film projection with Anthony McCall and the cooption of overhead projectors for light shows.

My work exists in that continuum. Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user. The Interlocutor project (on OBJKT) and several curious parties have duplicated the basic process.

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, movement, and a broader list of optical effects including the camera’s reaction to extreme shifts in brightness) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone — which thinks that this is just another day at the office. This is best described as a form of generative photography where there is a disconnect between the input and the output.

My work also exists in the continuum of the detritus that I generate (also money). Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink.

Tension - Seven

This piece has been minted for #tezphotoexp in August of 2024
Shot on August 17th 2024 on an iPhone 13 
This is a full frame and has been rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. The is no post processing. The entire output is in camera as it was output by the panorama feature. This phone is running the iOS 17 public beta. 

4130 × 2753 pixel 

ABOUT CELADOOR

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using an unmodified iPhone. The photographs exploit the limits of human imagination (in product design) using commodity hardware to create images that look past the familiar photographic output of smart phones to reveal the programming and processing that work invisibly in the background to deliver the food porn and family snapshots that fill our phones. Many images rely on causing failures in the image processing to generate outputs that depart from the visual polish that we expect from computational photography.

All the images are generated in camera (with less than a handful of exceptions) although the images that I post may be cropped or rotated to an ideal cardinal direction.

One of the most interesting things about this process is the total lack of visibility into the computational system that underlies the iPhone’s panorama process. This is functionally a black box that I feed with light and movement attempting to nudge the output towards a specific outcome. At the core of this is the iPhone’s panorama feature. The panorama feature has changed substantially since it was originally introduced and the level of abstraction has increased. These changes accelerated with the iPhone 12 however the parts that intersect with my work were only added as a software update in the fall of 2021. All modern in-camera panorama work falls under the broad heading of computational photography. In 2021 the familiar photo-stitching recipe for panoramas started to give way to elements of photogrammetry and depth data that relied upon the multiple cameras on the new iPhones.

NOTE: I have to make a lot of assumptions about what Apple is doing in the panorama software because they don’t disclose much and because I have only smallest possible interest in methodically reverse engineering how the feature works -- which is no interest.

Early on I felt I had some sense of what the variables are but as I have progressed over the last ten years I have found a number of shots that are simply outliers that may not be reproducible because the number of variables is unknowable.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. This is a natural part of the adoption curve in technology where it becomes possible for a curious la(z)yperson to start to misuse the technology. Darkroom photography. Long exposures. Abusing Polaroids. Intentional camera movement. Point and shoot photography. Digital photography. Circuit bending digital cameras. Circuit bending digital video recorders intended for children. The benign and beautiful exploitation of image file formats on home computers. This tracks to film projection with Anthony McCall and the cooption of overhead projectors for light shows.

My work exists in that continuum. Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user. The Interlocutor project (on OBJKT) and several curious parties have duplicated the basic process.

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, movement, and a broader list of optical effects including the camera’s reaction to extreme shifts in brightness) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone — which thinks that this is just another day at the office. This is best described as a form of generative photography where there is a disconnect between the input and the output.

My work also exists in the continuum of the detritus that I generate (also money). Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink.

Intersection #6

YMMV. How do free and almost free mints work for artists? I find it hard to be tightly tied to a position on this. The artist retaining ownership over the IP unless they elect CCO is key.

IMG_0696 FL

ABOUT CELADOOR

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using an unmodified iPhone. The photographs exploit the limits of human imagination (in product design) using commodity hardware to create images that look past the familiar photographic output of smart phones to reveal the programming and processing that work invisibly in the background to deliver the food porn and family snapshots that fill our phones. Many images rely on causing failures in the image processing to generate outputs that depart from the visual polish that we expect from computational photography. 

All the images are generated in camera  (with less than a handful of exceptions) although the images that I post may be cropped or rotated to an ideal cardinal direction. 

One of the most interesting things about this process is the total lack of visibility into the computational system that underlies the iPhone’s panorama process. This is functionally a black box that I feed with light and movement attempting to nudge the output towards a specific outcome. At the core of this is the iPhone’s panorama feature. The panorama feature has changed substantially since it was originally introduced and the level of abstraction has increased. These changes accelerated with the iPhone 12 however the parts that intersect with my work were only added as a software update in the fall of 2021. All modern in-camera panorama work falls under the broad heading of computational photography. In 2021 the familiar photo-stitching recipe for panoramas started to give way to elements of photogrammetry and depth data that relied upon the multiple cameras on the new iPhones. 

NOTE: I have to make a lot of assumptions about what Apple is doing in the panorama software because they don’t disclose much and because I have only smallest possible interest in methodically reverse engineering how the feature works -- which is no interest. 

Early on I felt I had some sense of what the variables are but as I have progressed over the last ten years I have found a number of shots that are simply outliers that may not be reproducible because the number of variables is unknowable. 

I am referring this earlier mint on H〓N to some degree as this demonstrates the image capture from an earlier generation of iPhone panorama feature. 

#### Occlusion XIV: capture
This short video is screen capture from an iPhone during the image capture for the next three pieces in the Occlusion series. You can see the layers in the image build up but the interaction between the layers is shrouded in the decisions made by the software engineering team for the panorama feature. [ teia.art/objkt/133296 ]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT 

The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. This is a natural part of the adoption curve in technology where it becomes possible for a curious la(z)yperson to start to misuse the technology. Darkroom photography. Long exposures. Abusing Polaroids. Intentional camera movement. Point and shoot photography. Digital photography. Circuit bending digital cameras. Circuit bending digital video recorders intended for children. The benign and beautiful exploitation of image file formats on home computers. This tracks to film projection with Anthony McCall and the cooption of overhead projectors for light shows. 

My work exists in that continuum. Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user. The Interlocutor project (on OBJKT) and several curious parties have duplicated the basic process.

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, movement, and a broader list of optical effects including the camera’s reaction to extreme shifts in brightness) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone — which thinks that this is just another day at the office. This is best described as a form of generative photography where there is a disconnect between the input and the output.  

My work also exists in the continuum of the detritus that I generate (also money). Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink.

Originally sent to collectors of the documentation on Rodeo. A free mint to accompany a really cheap mint. 👀

IMG 0741 companion to documentation posted on Rodeo

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using a smartphone camera, a light source, and an interlocutor - an object that sits in the light path and controls the light going into the lens through filtering, diffusion, diffraction, and reflection. Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink.

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, and movement) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone. This is best described as a form of generative photography.

About celadoor

The exploration of hardware with the goal of bending it to another purpose is at the center of my life, both personally and as a core point of interest in my career. The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user.

Tension - Six

Tension - Five

Tension - Four

Tension - Three

Tension - Two

Tension - One

Decay is a series entirely focused on crashing an iPhone to generate images that hint at the digital world that exists in the cameras that we all carry with us everywhere. Digital cameras are so common that we look at the outputs the same way we look at point and shoot cameras. 

**THE PROCESS**

My body of work is made up of images produced using multiple generations of iPhones and effective manipulation of the panorama feature within the camera software. There are only 4 essential elements: a light source, the photo app, myself and an interlocutor - an arbitrary object that sits in the light path partially occluding the lens. The goal is to crash the processing software, rendering it unable to ‘read’ the image data in the way it was intended.

Images are created by heavily controlling the path through which light gets to the camera lens by reflecting, refracting, or transmitting through the Interlocutor. Over the years I have used my fingers, money, credit card holograms, candy wrappers, the metallic closure of a sake bottle, water bottle wrappers, and whatever else has been at hand including the occasional bar napkin. The process is haphazard and, to some degree, parasitic. It makes full use of an unaltered consumer device with the goal of generating very specific crashes or glitches.


**DECAY SERIES**

Decay is my favorite output; to me, it is the most fun and a has the capacity to produce the most surprising results. Images that depart completely from anything recognizable as photography.

As with most of my work, each shot is composed in a similar way: moving the iPhone and the Interlocutor relative to the available light. There are very similar repeated patterns of movement up and down and left and right with occasional contortions as the pattern of light sometimes reframes the window of available movement in the panorama app. The unique outputs are created by subtle changes in my movement and in the intensity and spectral composition of the light sources relative to the pigment on the interlocutor.

The Decay crash happens in approximately 5% of images over time where the goal is to cause this crash. The odds of the crash are substantially lower when not attempting to cause this result and almost zero in the normal accepted use of the panorama feature. The crash introduces “pixels” into the frame at a lower resolution than the overall frame. These may be quantization blocks in the processing. For whatever the reason these blocks remain and often sit on top of flat color fields. There is a lower probability that parts of the “image” remain, meaning that the background has texture and structure in addition to the pattern of granular pixels. These pixels may be one color or the patterns may be formed by pixels of multiple colors. Sometimes they appear to include faces and creatures.


**ABOUT CELADOOR**

The exploration of hardware with the goal of bending it to another purpose is at the center of my life, both personally and as a core point of interest in my career. 

The tradition of generative photography is built on a similar repurposing of hardware and processes. Seeing a tool and imagining a how it can be used in a new way or or given a new purpose. 

Over the last ten years my personal work has coalesced around the iPhone and creating work that exploits the gaps between the assumptions made by the designers of the computational photography processing at the center iPhone’s camera and the actions of this one particular user.

Decay - Basel

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using a smartphone camera, a light source, and an interlocutor - an object that controls the light going into the lens through filtering, diffusion, diffraction, and reflection. Recent images have been shot with wrappers from candy and Scottish chocolate caramel wafer biscuits as well as labels reclaimed from food and drink. 

These images are built up in a systematic way in the panorama function in the iPhone camera. The patterns created in the panorama application are ingested by the image processing system in the iPhone and output as images because the phone doesn’t know I am doing it wrong. The final image is partly controlled by the input data (color, light, and movement) and partly controlled by the software on the iPhone. This is best described as a form of generative photography.

shot on iphone

🍵teia.cafe

Portfolio (Recent): maybe_celadoor [🖼️]