It was snowing this morning when I left for work. Flurries. I left home earlier than usual with the intention of stopping along the way to snap some images. I considered bringing my Nikon but I decided I wanted to keep things simple and just shoot with my iPhone. I chose a route through Princeton and Mercer Street, toward Battle Field Park.
I saw a few scenes on Mercer Street that I wanted to capture. The Princeton Theological Seminary Library was lit with street lamps that gave it a warm wonderland feeling. There are a few colorful mansions with snow-covered trees that I wanted to capture.
But there was no easy way to just pull over on Mercer Street to snap a photo. It’s a busy road. Parking is on one side only. Near the residential part of the road. Residents had already occupied these spaces.
I continued my commute via Quaker Road.
This is the USGS Water Station 01460440 on the Delaware and Raritan Canal at Port Mercer in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. There is a parking area nearby, on the other side of the canal.
Shot with Camera+. Edited in Photogene. Filter is Frost from Priime photography app.
I almost always have a camera on me. Some time ago, I started keeping a packed camera bag and a tripod in my car. It helped me satisfy my photography urge when inspiration found it’s way to my eyes. With the camera always nearby I could pullover, stop, and capture what I saw. On my lunch break I could walk around capturing moments throughout my day. Funny thing is, I noticed that I still captured more images with my iPhone than with Nikon.
It’s true, the best camera is the camera you have with you. But what has also become true, at least for me, over the last few years is that the best camera is the one that allows me to process and share my vision in the moment. This article by Daniel Korpai has some great tips that I have incorporated into my instant photography workflow.
With the introduction of iCloud Photo Library, there is a new smart album in the Photos app: Favorites. When you’re browsing through your images you can find a little heart icon (?) under every single picture. Tap it, and Photos will automatically put that photo in the Favorites album and also make sure not to delete those in case you have the Optimize iPhone Storage turn on under the iCloud Photo Library’s settings.
Go through all of your images in the Photos app and tap the little heart icon when you think you might want to process that particular image in the future. In the Favorites album I then go through for a second time to review my selected images one more time, just to make sure I only keep the very best.Daniel Korpai
That’s a new tip for me and I have started using it. It makes cleaning up the mess in my iOS photo library much easier.
iOS 8 added the ability to pass images onto third-party app for editing. The images undergo non-destructive edits which means I can always undo. I mostly use the Afterlight app. It has lots of filters but I almost never use any of them. But it has a few editing tools that I absolutely love. I have a few other apps but few of them are available as editors from the photos library.
This is why I reverse this process. Instead of opening a third-party app, find the image you want to edit in the Photos app, then pass the photo to the other application with the help of an iOS Extension created by the Workflow app.
I started doing that last week. I created a Workflow to pass images from Adobe Lightroom Mobile to a few of my apps favourite including Instagram.
My workflow is simple. Capture an image with the native camera app and either use share sheets or workflows to pass the image to another app, usually Afterlight, for processing. I use other camera apps for specialized captures. I have a camera app for creating HDR images, long exposures, one for macro photography, and a few that allow for manual control of the camera. These are organized into an iOS folder named simply Cameras.
My most used camera apps are:
Native iOS Camera
vividHDR
Slow Shutter
Stay Focused
Apps that I use for post processing are organized into an iOS folder called Darkroom. This includes, Photogene, an app I consider the Photoshop of iOS, Afterlght, VSCO Cam, Snapseed, Darkroom, and Image Sizer to change images to fit Instagram’s square format.
My most used editing apps are:
Afterlight
VSCO Cam
Photogene
Image Sizer
Daniel uses VSCO Grid to publish his mobile image but despite the square format, I prefer Instagram. It’s easy to publish an image to Instagram and simultaneouly share to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Foursquare.
Please read the article. The author mentions a few apps that I may download, try out, and perhaps add to my iPhone _photography bag.
I took the day off to relax a bit. My son Shaan came home early from school — he has a study break for exams this week — so I took him out for lunch at the One53 restaurant in Rocky Hill. We talked about college, school, and world history. I then persuaded him to come with me to the Rock Brook in Skillman. I wanted to test out an iPhone app I recently discovered called Slow Shutter Cam. It’s for creating long exposure images.
The app creates these images by combining multiple exposures using a clever image algorithm. I then made some quick adjustments in Photogene for iOS. The photo above was edited solely on my iPhone 6.
The image above was tweaked in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
