Day 14 of 365 Day Challenge

Walking back from the city after a meeting, I took some city shots with Hipstamatic but I hadn't realised that my iPhone had shaken and changed the settings and most of the pictures I took were a red tinge which was just awful. I must get rid of that film, I really don't like it at all. Anyway, fortunately I had discovered this half way through my walk home and decided to walk back through a park to try and get my shot for the day.

Well, there was a little girl going around and around the fountain on her little scooter and I just had to have a picture of this. I am always a little reticent about taking pictures of children but they are wonderful subjects. So I chose a spot and waited for her to come around again. At the same time a little boy ran into view and as she came around he peaked out and looked at her. It was such a cute photo I had to try and do something with it.

The children were quite a distance apart so to make the picture square I first had to take it into Handy Picture to increase the top with the resize option. I am always enthralled by the way it just adds onto the top to match the picture. It made a couple of mistakes but this was easily corrected with the retouch button. Next, I went into Snapseed to use the Tune Up option.

What next?? From now on it was all iColorama. I wanted to give it more of a picture book appearance because there were children in it so to do this, I first chose Style>Edges and choose the Edges option I liked.  Then I returned to the original and used Style>Simplify>, number 2 but I put a mask over the children so that they remained sharp and applied and saved it. Then I blended the two with the mask still on so that the children were still the original but the background was more 'cartoonish'.

Then came the clever bit. While keeping the mask on I went to Preset>Borders and choose number 6 I think and turned down the opacity slightly. This made the children look as if they were on the fringes of the scene. Lastly I just blurred out the little boy's face in Repix as he is a child. Here is the result:

Flower Power

I took a picture on the iPhone on Sunday which I would have preferred to use as my Day 11 picture but I used a building instead because it was more of a challenge for me.

Anyhow, this is the original picture and the enhanced one. I first sketched it out using the Artomation app then I pulled the original and sketched versions into iColorama creating lots of new versions and then blending them all back. Finally, I used a Deform option under Forms to change the look and added a vignette.

Day 13 of 365 Day Challenge

It's a miserable day outside and I don't intend to go out so what to do about my daily iPhone picture??

Well, we have a magnificent view from our apartment and I guess this will be the subject of many of my day challenges this year so the secret is to make it interesting.  While trying out loads of shots I noticed that the window in our bedroom is steamed up with the cold and rain so I decide to make use of this. I am using the camera app VividHDR for the first time so experiment with a couple of the options and the best turns out to be Dramatic HDR.

Once I have taken the picture I bring it into Snapseed and Crop it and Tune it a bit. Then into Stackables and layer it with the layers Ancient Sky and Sundance. Finally, I take it into iColorama to add a vingette. I find the Preset>Border, border #3 with lowered radius and opacity has become my favourite vingette for finishing off a photo.

So here it is:

Window to the World

365 Day iPhoneography Challenge

I have started a 365 Day Photo Challenge which means you need to take and post a picture every day. This challenge is on the Mobitog Community Site but I have decided to post to my blog as well so here are the first 12 days:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

 

Day 11

 

Day 12

Olloclip Macro Lens iPhone 6

I have never done macro photography before but have been dying to do it for a long time so was very excited to learn that I could get a macro lens for my iPhone 6. After doing my usual research I decided to go for the Olloclip 4-in-1 which has a fisheye, wide angle, and 2 macro lenses all in one. I haven't tried the other two lenses yet because I am really interested in the macro lenses.

Well, what fun and the results are superb. It requires a very steady hand and a tripod is obviously the best but none of these were taken with a tripod and although it sometimes takes a couple of attempts it's not that difficult. You do have to play with them to get used to how far away you have to be from the subject but then the results are astonishing. At first I used the Olloclip app that you can use with it but frankly I found the native camera app and the other camera apps that I have like Camera+ or even Hipstamatic much easier to use.

This first picture of a grasshopper was a little boring so I jazzed it up on my iPad using Repix, iColorama, and Snapseed.

The next shot was taken using the Hipstamatic camera app. It's actually a tiny flower about half a centimeter in size:

Jane + Ina's 1982

The final pictures have had no processing except reduction in size and metadata:

Poinsettia Stamen

Piece of Coral from the Beach

Cicarda Beetle Head

Bug on the Beach

Who would think you could do all this with an iPhone!

Hipstamatic and the iPhone 6

Hipstamatic is an iPhone camera app which applies filters to the pictures while you are taking them to give them a vintage film look. There are all sorts of combinations of camera and film. Some of the cameras and film come standard with the app but most you need to purchase as packs.

So I decided to buy the app and get a couple of the combinations after reading the June 2014 issue of the Mobiography Magazine which was a Hipstamatic special edition. By the way this is a great magazine especially if you are starting off in mobile photography. Lots of help and tips and inspiration.

I have to say that there are quite a lot of filters that I don't like and I read a lot of the recommendations on the Mobitog forum before buying some of the packs. Unfortunately the makers sometimes only have the packs available for a limited time which I find quite irritating as some of the ones I wanted are not available at the moment. I am sure it is to force you to buy others. Don't get sucked into buying them all. It really isn't necessary and you will probably find you only use 25% of them.

It was fascinating using the filters while you are shooting. You really need to try them out and get a feel. Some I really didn't like and others were good in some instances but not in others.  However, I got some stunning shots that really don't require any further manipulation at all. The titles show the camera and film combinations. Apart from reducing the size and adding metadata only the last picture was slightly enhanced in Snapseed:

Jane + Ina's 1982

John S + Ina's 1969

John S + Ina's 1969

Helga Viking + Ina's 1969

Loftus + DC

John S + Ina's 1969

John S + Ina's 1969