National Portrait Gallery iPhone workshop~ Autostitch ~ BracketMode~ Snapseed

Last weekend, at the National Portrait Gallery, I had a great group of eager to learn iPhone Photographers in my workshop. We worked through setting up and using a few shooting apps and processing apps before we went into the gallery and began making images. As I was working with students helping them to make shots and use apps, the window at the end of the Modern wing caught my eye. I loved the whimsical stools arranged in front of it on the square tile floor, as well as the light in the window that was filtered by translucent blinds. I wanted to capture the whole scene and in order to do that I had to make 38 shots using the BracketMode app which captures two shots rapidly, one capturing the highlights in the scene and one capturing the dark areas in the scene. I then blended the shots together in Autostitch. While I was showing a student the process I began to process the shot in Snapseed and he and I both liked the way the image was developing. The new RetroLuxe filter in Snapseed is great for creating a moody feeling in the image.

 

This scene made me laugh! It was so real you just had to look twice. The artist who created this was so creative.  I used ClassicPan to shoot the vertical image eliminating distracting elements on the left side of the scene. Then I processed the image in Snapseed adding a RetroLuxe filter effect, border and toning.

This is also a 38 shot panorama made with the same process as the opening image, using BracketMode for the capture and Autostitch for the stitch. I just loved this scene with the red sofas, tile floor, green carpet and window. When the stitch was done it was a little short on the left side so I used Anti-Crop to add to the image on the left. It was not a perfect add so I used a little Glaze, after processing the image in Snapseed to obscure the issue.When making stitched images it is always a good idea to begin and end the shooting series well beyond the area of the scene you want and overlap images by twenty percent to get a good stitch.

In this image you can see where Anti-Crop added image area on the left side behind the red sofa, but only in a fair way. If I had not told you would you have noticed? I will be conducting more iPhone workshops with Capital Photography Center in  Baltimore, Washington, DC and Horizon Photography Workshops in Chesapeake City, Md. I hope you can join me for some iPhone fun! Learn about creative apps and make some great images!