3 Ways To iPhone HDR

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If you’d like to use HDR techniques for your mobile photographs you’ve got choices. Moving from simple and limited to more complex and robust, consider these three: first, the iPhone Camera app’s built in HDR function; second, the app Pro HDR; and third the app TrueHDR. I use all three, moving from one to another as the contrast of the scene increases.
The strength of HDR renderings and the artifacts they tend to produce can be varied to suit individual tastes. Regardless of whether you favor a light touch or a heavy hand, if you photograph, with or without a smart phone, sooner or later you’ll need HDR. It’s an essential technique …
Read more on The Huffington Post.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

Correct Perspective With the App Front View


How many times have you wished you could quickly straighten lines in an image that have been distorted by perspective? Being able to control perspective is particularly important for architectural photography and it can be used to make stronger compositions in all images.
How many times have you wished you could control the aspect ratio of an image? Making an image more horizontal, square, or vertical or changing an image from one to another can be a powerful tool for creating more expressive images.
One app will do both — FrontView.
Read more at The Huffington Post.

iResize Your Mobile Images With One Touch


When you want to make a mobile phone image smaller quickly, launch iResize. Why would you want to change the size of an image? There are so many reasons; to email it, to post it online, and/or to share it in social networks are just a few. And with smart phone images growing in size every year, the need to do this is only increasing.
iResize can also change the proportion of an image from horizontal to panoramic, square, or even vertical.
iResize is one of those apps that you can learn instantly and is so easy to use that you’ll quickly overlook how often you use it, which is exactly what makes a go to app.
Read more with step-by-step illustrations on The Huffington Post.
Find iResize on iTunes.

Mobile Retouching Wizardry At Your Fingertips With App Touch Retouch


The iPhone app Touch Retouch performs the kind of stunning magic that first appeared in Adobe Photoshop only a few years ago. Adobe introduced this type of instant retouching based on pattern recognition under the name of Content Aware Fill. Now a similar technology is available for smartphone photography. You can also use the Clone Stamp tool to copy specific information from one part of an image to another, either to cover over an unwanted element or duplicate it.

With a little practice, you’ll start seeing photographs that you once might have ignored or passed by because of minor imperfections, which can now be convincingly removed in instants with the tap of your fingers. (It’s great for filling in the gaps in panoramic stitches too.)
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Magically Change The Proportion Of Your Photographs With The App 'Liquid Scale'


You can use the app Liquid Scale to distort the frame of an image without distorting key elements in it. Like Adobe Photoshop’s Content Aware Scale, this software identifies image elements that are most likely to be more important than others and distorts other areas, typically areas that are smooth or randomly textured. There are limits to how far you can go before less distorted image elements begin to look unnatural, which are largely image dependent. In some cases, you can go so far as to convincingly turn a vertical image into a horizontal image. It’s magic.
This app will do more than change your images, it will change the way you see.
Read more and see more on The Huffington Post.
Plus find more app reviews.

Render Sophisticated Light FX With Rays


As far as magic moments go, few can compare to those fleeting moments when light streams from the heavens or wraps around objects, as if making visible some some divine presence. Kings and priests would pay dearly for the ability to place such signs at their command. You can have it for the simple price of an app.
Rays identifies highlights within an image and uses them as sources to render rays of light from …
Read more here.
Plus find more app reviews.

Dual Apps Render Sophisticated Light FX – Lens Flare & Lens Light


When it comes to photography, you can do a lot with a little light. Adding light into your images offers many creative possibilities: add a sparkle to someone’s eyes, make highlights shine, enhance an atmospheric effect, trace a constellation in the sky, render a cinematic special effect, and much, much more. In short, you can enhance the center of attention in any image or create a new one.
Adding light into your photographs after exposure just got easier on your iPhone. Brain Fever Media makes two apps that can add light fx to your images: Lens Flare and Lens Light.
Lens Flare offers 45 different effects — mostly star patterns, some edge flares, and a few linear streaks.
Lens Light offers 54 different effects including rays, spotlights, streaks, scratches, and even suns, moons, and lightning.
Read more on The Huffington Post.

iPhone Experiments – Bones


Recently, during an African safari, I spent several days photographing animals. We saw all of the big five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo) and many other animals in one day. It was the first time I made a concerted effort to make wildlife photographs, which was excellent practice. I gained an increased appreciation for how moments of peak action (or lack thereof) can make or break some photographs. I made many competent photographs that entertained my family at home, which I have no intention of using professionally.
In between these sessions, I spent a few hours photographing the skulls of animals displayed in the camp. Initially, I photographed very freely, exploring many ways of photographing them. As I reviewed the images, I learned from both the successes and the failures, gradually refining my the point of view of the collection. I appreciate the images that go beyond direct representation and become suggestive of something more through abstraction and metaphor. Ultimately, these images, which I consider sketches, will lead to final results, which will result in professional products.
Unexpectedly, I found that these sessions helped me develop my thinking on how to incorporate the process of sketching, both with words, drawings and photographs, into the development and presentation of future professional work. In the right contexts, I might even publish, display or sell select sketches.
This session also helped me explore longstanding personal themes within my life and work. These images expand my understanding of the power of photography to transform our perceptions of a subject through close observation. They highlight for me the limitations of vision (and photography) to see beneath or beyond surfaces. They confirm how I frequently try to suggest the often unseen foundations of the things I photograph. They remind me of how much I love to draw bones, especially the human skeleton. They reinforce my longstanding desire to create sculptures, many influenced by these forms. They resurface my artistic influences; in particular Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore. I’m sure there are other valuable resources I can mine from this experience, if I give both the process and these results further thought.
Explorations often have many unintended consequences; often these become the discoveries we’re looking for when we engage in experiments. You’ll learn more from simply observing your creative process, without judgment, than from anything else. Awareness is everything. What makes a process of experimentation even more successful, richer and more relevant is subsequently reviewing our results and continually refining our lines of inquiry.
How could experimentation help you reveal, connect with and develop your influences?
What experiments would be most helpful to you?
These images were made in Mala Mala, South Africa during my recent South Africa Photo Safari (sponsored by NIK).
Apps used were PicGrunger and Snapseed.
See more images and find more posts on The Huffington Post.

Photography's Changed – Again

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Here’s an excerpt from my first post on Huffington Post.
“Photography’s constant move towards ease, speed, economy, and ubiquity continues today and it has recently reached a new critical apex.
In the first decade of the 21st century, Apple released the iPhone (2007) and a host of independent applications followed, designed to preview, make, process, enhance, and distribute photographs in seconds. Photography just got easier, faster, less expensive, and more ubiquitious …
When did you discover you can do this?
5-15 seconds     Make and save image
15-30 seconds  Process an image
15-30 seconds  Comment on an image and transmit it to others
15-30 seconds  Find other people’s images
15-30 seconds Comment on other people’s images or put them to other uses
In about a minute you can make, process, comment on, and distribute an image. It can take you a similar amount of time to do the same with someone else’s image.
If you haven’t done it yet, try it now. I just did. Doing this will change the way you experience and think about photography …”
Read the full post here.
I share useful links to posts on the history of photography, camera, and camera phone too.
Find iPhone Apps and Accessories I use here.