True HDR: Longwood Gardens

After a full morning of shooting with the Nikon, I walked around the Longwood Conservatory looking for some photo opportunities with my iPhone. Now I will admit, it was very crowded and people were everywhere, but I found some places to pause and make some HDR iPhone images. I am amazed at this application how one can handhold and still get pretty sharp bracketed shots...I had my Joby with me but there was not an appropriate place to set it on for many of these shots. These images were processed on the iPhone using various apps, but the one that gives this image the "look" is called Vintage Scene.

The advantage of shooting in the late afternoon on a sunny day is the lighting that fills the conservatory from the south west. In the Palm House the sun was filling the room front lighting the palms details and fronds. I am not usually there at this time of day so it was a fun thing to see how it looks in the afternoon.

Processed in PhotoForge for the aged look and then into the app called PicGrunger for border and texture.

This is a contrived image made in an app called Symmetry, but it originated with a straight shot of some drooping ferns against a foggy conservatory window. 

This image is also contrived in Symmetry and started as a TrueHDR shot of a stained glass window in the kids area of the conservatory. The afternoon light was creating the stained glass colors to be projected on the interior surface of the window frame and bricks. The app Crop'n'Frame recently had an update and added text to its application. The text here is an example of what it can do.

A Rose is a Rose....APPs...Slow Shutter: AverageCameraPro and more.

Slow Shutter

Today, was a great day to get outside and get a jump on some early yard clean up. I spent the best part of the day raking leaves and picking up branches that the wild wind over the last day or so sent sailing to the ground. I also spent some time working on my presentation for Penn Camera on iPhone Photography dubbed "iPhoneography". By the late afternoon I was done in the office needed a break and decided before the roses fade away, I should take a few more images...so I used the iPhone app SlowShutter and Average Camera Pro (multiple exposure app) to capture these images. Ran them through the various apps I have been using Lo-Mob and VintageScene for the aged look and a little texture in Iris. I like the Vintage Scene for the fact that you can save your settings if you find a combo of choices that you like.

Slow Shutter

Average Camera Pro Multiple Exposure

Slow Shutter

Average Camera Pro: Vintage Scene Apps

Yesterday I received a lovely vase of roses..and in keeping with the rose leaf, rose theme, I decided to try some multiple exposures last night with the Average Camera Pro app and the vase of roses. It takes a little experimenting with the iPhone and the app to get the exact look and composition, not unlike working with a Big Camera in the field making comps and working a scene. When I had some images I thought had potential I went to work processing them for a "Look" in the vein of the aged out of focus work I have posted on the last couple blogs..so maybe this will be it for that "Look" but I must admit I do love the apps, Lo-Mob and Vintage Scene in combo with each other. There is also a Filter Texture inside of the Iris app called "Old Book" that I used on the opening image as well for the script and texture. Vintage Scene has some Victorian borders which lend themselves well to the aged look of these rose images here. When I was processing these, they reminded me of when film photographers would smear the front of their lens with a substance to create a faded soft look.

This image was processed differently in that the original capture was made with the Average Camera Pro app, but first I smudged it up in PhotoForge. After that I ran it through a watercolor and oil paint app in PhotoForge, then I applied a sand texture to it in Iris....and added a vignette and the ran it through Vintage Scene for the border effect....lots of fun and experimenting to see what will happen...

The good news too is that my 70-200 lens arrived today, repaired from Nikon after I dropped it.........Yippie!

To everything there is a season: Apps: Average Camera Pro:Lo-Mob and a few more

A couple days ago I made some fanciful images with the iPhone and an app called Average Camera Pro a multiple exposure app, of rose leaves dried by winter that had fallen on my patio. I liked those images so much that I made a few more quick shots of them two days ago, processed them and then looked at them again and felt they needed something more...so I never posted them.
Yesterday I had correspondence from an overseas workshop organization conducting workshops in England and Belgium....and that rang a bell in my head. The genesis of an idea.

I have letters from WWII that Dad wrote to his family in the US when he served in Europe and I thought they were just the right material to make an overlay for these very soft and nondescript images with a vintage feel. After locating the letters, (stressed a little over that for a few moments) I thumbed through them to find a letter I liked as a photo subject. Since they are now pushing 70 years in age, they have the aged letter look I wanted. Dad's handwriting was also very pretty in my mind and flowed with just the look I wanted. Then.......

This morning I was reading about the View Project in photography, by Joyce Tenneson. "The View Project is about photographs that mirror something in the photographer’s inner life – images that are personal and powerful, yet perhaps not clearly understood, even to the viewer/photographer" The View is an exploration of why certain places or photographs that have such a powerful effect on us as individuals. What is it - beyond surface beauty - that makes specific visual moments so indelible in our memory?

That also rang some bells....the rose images I made the other day reminded me of the little wax paper pressed flowers my Mom had kept from her home in England and also showed me how to make as a child...

Now I got it, why I wanted to pair the two sets of images together....yes I believe there is meaning to our images, on a level sometimes we can know and other times only guess as to what really resonates inside the photographer.
So that's the story behind these images...now for the processing. I mostly used Lo-Mob on the iPhone for the aged look, Filterstorm for sharpening and contrast etc PicGrunger for some more aged effects..then Iris for the overlay of the letter writing on the processed leaf images. I have added some of the letter images so you can see the original file and also the processed images with out the letter writing. Maybe you will like the images with out the addition of the letter script better??? or maybe you will not like them at all, that's whats great about art! One must really think though.....about the fact that they were all made and processed on a phone in the palm of my hand....pretty amazing technology.

Average Camera Pro

I was asked about the process I  used to create this image and the easiest way for me to explain is with pictures and a little verbiage in a blog. Hope this explains it. The image started with the capture of some dried rose leaves laying in a bank of snow. So the back ground was very clean with some exceptions of dirt spots in the snow..... the image below is the original capture straight from the iPhone as I made 9 shots with the Average Camera Pro app. which blended them as a multiple exposure single shot. (Like Nikon camera's in camera multiple exposure function) Pretty cool huh!

I ran the original shot through an app called Lo-Mob and selected the filter 

AE TTV Print Toning and this was the result I liked as a starting point.

After this process, I opened the image above in an app called Vintage Scene. In Vintage Scene you can select a color for the image aging,  a color for the paper aging, a fade out option, an image strength option, a texture strength option and a border option. Here's a screen grab of the settings I used to create the opening image. Adding color and a certain texture in Vintage Scene finished the processing of the opening image.

 

Winter Rose Leaves:Apps: Lo-mob: Vintage Scene: BlurFX

It was a busy day running errands, so I didn't have time for any photos today until I went to my mailbox around 5:00pm. The recent snow melt revealed  some of last years rose leaves the winter winds had blown off the climbing rose and the heavy snow had flattened them on the patio liked pressed flowers in a book. So, I went in the house and grabbed my iPhone and made just a few shots, as the light faded. Maybe tomorrow I will work it with the big girl camera as I like how they looked, and it would be nice to have some real hi res files to process as well. These shots were made with two camera apps: The straight shot was made with Camera Plus Pro from Global Delight developers and the multiple exposure shot was made with the camera app: Average CameraPro.

They were processed in an app called Lo-Mob which is an old film app, and then I used the app Vintage Scene to further enhance the look and apply some textures. I also used Blur FX to soften the background on a few of these images. In addition levels adjustments were made in an app called Iris.

PhotoFactory and PhotoForge

Yesterday I made a few quick shots of a beautiful orchid with the iPhone. I could have worked the composition a little more as I don't like the bottom of the Orchid cut off, but the idea was to grab something to work with in an app called PhotoFactory. I like this app for its creative possibilities. Here is a link for a Demo: http://www.iphoneography.com/journal/tag/photo-factory
Smudging has been a technique available in PhotoShop and used by a very well known photographer in Baltimore: Robert McClintock
I have liked the artistic results one can achieve while doing some smudge work! It is a little hard to smudge on a small iPhone screen but is lots of fun.

Here is the progression of the processing I used to create the opening image:

Original Capture

First smudged version in PhotoForge

Colorized in PhotoFactory and Stretched a little

Stretched more and reversed in PhotoFactory: Shadow under image and corner vignettes in PhotoFactory

 Because there were not a lot of strokes in the lower left corner of the image, when it was stretched it became a little soft, so I might go back into the stretched version and try smuding back in some texture strokes...lots of fun this iPhone stuff! Give it a try!

Final Image Frame added in the app Crop'n'Frame

Howard Rawlings Conservatory

Original Capture Hipstamatic: Salvadore 84 Lens: Dream Canvas Film. Processed in Photo Studio, applied the Explosion effect to achieve the Zoom effect.

Today I volunteered for the Baltimore Camera Club at the Howard Rawlings Conservatory helping their members make some images, work their cameras and shoot with a macro lens. After everyone was in the groove and working subjects I made a few quick iPhone shots.

Capture: True HDR 4 vertical shot Stitched in AutoStitch; PhotoForge for watercolor filter: Oil Paint Filter with selective opacity: Pic Grunger for aged look, blended two layers one soft focus and one sharp for the look.

Banana Leaf: Captured with Camera Plus Pro: Brightness: contrast in Perfect Photo

Vegetation: Smudged in PhotoForge: Blended back with original in Iris and reduced opacity.

iDarkroom App: Rolling The Dice

This image I  made while grabbing a bite to eat in the cafe at the Newseum. I liked the colors of the modern chairs and the way the various directional lights in the cafe created interesting shadows on the shiny floor. No grand image but just a fun shot.

I wanted to process it but didn't feel like spending a lot of time trying to find just the right app combo, so I went to iDarkroom, which has a few frame options, a few texture options, a few light options and hit the dice icon.

Screen Grab app

Screen Grab app...showing main processing page of the app note the dice in the upper right of the screen shot.

 When you roll or click on the dice the program picks different combos of each and comes up with a new altered image.Now, not all the picks are good combos, but if you continue to tab on the dice icon it will continue to generate options...some of which are fun, and in a million years one might not even make the same option choices...so here are a few rolls of the dice just to show you what is possible in this app. After the dice shots I either brightened the image or sharpened it in another app. and added a frame effect in Photoshop Express app.

 Note* (To screen grab your iPhone hit the power button while simultaneously hitting the home button and release, you should see the iPhone blink and the image is captured to your camera roll.)