I really enjoyed this exhibition. Impressed what you gave achieved by capture with an iPhone 4s.
You say "Not too contrasty, Not too deep black-point, still great for post-processing. I was very into cinematic film-like style so a lot of heavy post processing were applied." I'd been interested to know more about your technique.
Well, It's all comes down to
the basic of photography actually (subject, white space, balance, pattern, shapes, line, colors). With a little of experience and a lot of improvement. I'll explain. Back then I own my first DSLR and I was very upset with DoF and Bokeh. Looking back my pictures back were very bland and messy. Then after got an iPhone I started to get interested in pushing the camera to it's limit whatever it's quality. That was when my photography mind started to shift.
I thought a lot more about the foreground and the background because shallow DoF are not possible with phones camera. I got hook with the process and It felt very fun to do. Perspective is also important. When you have fixed lens like on iPhone you got the get to know it's characteristic.
iPhone 4S's focal length is actually perfect for all-round photography, at 35mm. Yes, it was very narrow for today standard. But it was perfectly balance (between 18-50mm). It gave this minimalistic look and the perspective lines were too not messy and controllable. Oh! and
always set the exposure to your desire every time before take a picture. Do not always rely on automatic setting.
For post processing it is very easy to do nowadays that it's feels like cheating. I use film simulator like VSCO most of the time. Their A-series is the best one. I bought it long time ago so I still have it today without any subscription. But you need to know what you are doing with the adjustment not just follow VSCO trends on Pinterest.
For newer iPhones it find the the processed pictures for the camera are sometime too contrasty. I have to work way around by take a RAW pictures first. Then process them on Lightroom with neutral look (VSCO's RAW editing tools are very bad). Finally apply film simulator on any filter app.
But really if the composition of the photos isn't already good enough whatever you apply the filter it's still gonna look bad. So the most important thing is to get the photo right in the first place.
