Dual Camera Mode

I saw a fun picture from a friend on Facebook recently: it was a lovely nature shot (for which she’s famous) with a “selfie” of her in a little stamp on the photo.
Clever, I thought.

But then I realized that a couple of other people had posted similar shots, and they were mobile uploads – which meant, they had to have been uploaded on location from the phone, not downloaded and doctored afterwards.
Naturally, there are a number of apps available for your phone that will process photos – saturating or desaturating color, applying filters like “sketch” or “cartoon,” and processes like cropping or even attaching two different halves or slices of a photo to another photo – interleaving them.
But this one I had not seen before. Then I realized there was a watermark or “stamp” on the photo that said “Photography by Samsung Galaxy.” The Galaxy of course is the Android tablet, which comes equipped with a camera. In case you’ve missed this – most smart phones and tablets take better photos than many cameras these days. And, because they are “smart” devices, you have access to all those aforementioned apps that allow you to look like you’re extremely clever – or, to be extremely clever and creative with your photos.
So I did my homework and found out that yes, there were apps that allowed for double-sided photography. Now, I’m not positive that the method my friend used for her photo was this dual mode camera, but it is in fact one way of creating such a photo.
The basic idea is, in a way, an extension of the “selfie.” It allows the photographer to take a picture of him or herself against a background of his choosing, but getting a perfect image of the background and not sacrificing it for the addition of a strained looking image of him or herself.
Or, alternatively, get a nice shot of yourself against a random neutral or framing background that lets you take advantage of beautiful light, a nice sky, or excellent sunset.
With the iPhone, the app is called Dual Shot, but there are several such apps available on the various platforms.
The app allows you to find a shot you like on one side, of your camera – using the camera in its standard mode – and then include a “window” on the other side, in “selfie” mode. With a little creativity, you don’t necessarily have to include your face in the window, but could ostensibly include a window with anything you wanted on the main body of the photo. The possibilities are as limited as your imagination.

Nancy Roberts