trailwork

A free functional art piece by Adam DeSorbo. A camera that records the date, place, weather, and moon phase of every photograph, in the visual language of trail cameras.

trailwork is a camera that produces images in the visual language of trail cameras: infrared monochrome or specialized color, soft halo around highlights, a data stamp burned into the bottom edge with date, time, place, weather, and moon phase. Every photograph is signed with the coordinates where you stood at the moment you made it. This GPS precision to four decimal points or about 30 feet is part of the work, not an oversight. trailwork is interested in attention to specific places and the way in which people, animals, and plant life inhabit them. The app is intentionally limited. Three optical lenses (0.5×, 1×, 3×) and one digital crop (2×). The user may zoom up to 15x digitally. Two looks: IR or color. Flash on, off, or auto. Tap to focus, drag to bias exposure. The shutter. Captures save to your Photo Library. There are no filters, no settings menus, no editing, no in-app gallery, no sharing. To browse your photographs, use Photos. It is an functional art piece by Adam DeSorbo, an artist working in photography, woodworking, and material processes related to time, place, and ecological attention. trailwork extends an earlier web-based work, On Trail, into a portable form. It is free, ad-free, and collects no data beyond what is required to make and stamp the photographs. See the full privacy policy at adamdesorbo.com/trailwork-privacy. See more of Adam DeSorbo's work at adamdesorbo.com.