Blark Revisited

Updating my blog has been a bit difficult for me over the past few weeks. I don't shoot as much as I would want to, my creativity isn't exactly thriving and overall I don't put enough time into my photography work these days. I'm so sorry about that. Life just gets in the way, but in a good way.

I know you're probably not here for just another app review. I realize that several of my recent blog posts have been essentially app reviews. I don't know how I feel about that. My blog was always intended to be about photography itself, about photography as a creative discipline, about art and intuition, not so much about the technical craft or about gear. I promise I will come back to that.

Several projects are about to start very recently and I'm hopefully coming back from them with a lot of new ideas and many creative sparks.

But just to keep this blog updated and to quickly say hello to all of you, I'm back with another app review. I know. And it's not even about a new app, it's about an app I have already talked about here and here.

So today's quick update is about the Blark app again. Blark is quite a remarkable monochrome app for the iPhone, which I enjoy very much. For several projects I've been working with this app and I always came back feeling inspired and enthusiastic about the quality of photos that came out of these little experiments.

In the beginning of the development of Blark, during the second half of 2025 the app was still rather new and still had some bugs that honestly were rather annoying to work with. But that has changed so much. Many of the initial problems about image orientation, about the camera control button and lens selection are mostly a thing of the past now. With the most recent update even some bugs with the new iOS 27 beta have been resolved. Today the Blark black and white camera app has become a beautiful, very versatile and very powerful tool for the creation of monochrome images on the iPhone.

I certainly can't say that I've tested all monochrome camera apps for iPhone that are out there, but I've seen quite a few. And I have to say since its initial release I'm always coming back to the Blark app. I like the interface, I enjoy the predefined filters, the way to create your very own filters comes in handy as well, and the Blark app is one of these rare occasions that is able to shoot a fully filtered live monochrome video. Just in HD and not in 4K, but hey, we're getting there.

Recently the developer of the Blark app, Bezaleel Ashefor, was reaching out to me offering some discounts for the lifetime license of the Blark app which I wanted to share with you here.

Here's the link to redeem the special 20% offer for the lifetime plan of the Blark app on Apple's AppStore. Alternatively you can use the code ABOUTGRAU using the button "Redeem Offer Code" on the paywall screen of the app. Keep in mind that you can only switch to the lifetime plan as long as there's no other active subscription. Depending on your region the lifetime license of the Blark app is about 30 USD. With this code you will be roughly charged only 24 USD. Have fun! Spread the word and support an indie developer.

And I'd be curious to know if and what you like or hate about this app. Just reach out to me. Again I promise to come back with less gear related topics in the near future. Stay tuned.