Old Warbird

I did some editing to a picture I posted earlier, the original you can see here. I wanted to make the picture look like it was taken on a WWII military base but the original had all these people walking around and other things in it that were obviously out of context. To remove all of that I did some extensive editing using TouchRetouch, using auto mode for some of the gross fixes and the clone brush for detail work. After the clean up was done I used OldPhoto Pro for that aged look.

Polaroid

I took a quick snapshot of my son and my sister-in-law and to me it just looked like something I would have taken with my old Polaroid camera I had as a kid. I used two separate filters in Lo-Mob to create this image; one for the Polaroid style frame, and another to achieve the right color balance I was looking for.

Playtime

I was watching the kids play in the back yard with this beautiful sunset as a backdrop. I took this picture with Pro HDR, the yard was actually in pretty deep shadow and the processing in Pro HDR washed it out quite a bit. I put the image in PhotoWizard, masked out everything above the roof line of the houses, then applied some exposure and color correction to the bottom portion to bring back a more natural look.

Toothy Smile

With a newborn son I spend a lot of time at the doctor's office making sure he is healthy. One of the exam rooms has an exam table that is styled like an old carnival hippo. I took this picture of it and was inspired to make the picture look like an old photo that may have been taken in the 30s or 40s at some long lost carnival. This was taken with the iPhone 4, color treated in Photostudio, edges darkened and roughed up in Lo-Mob, and finally the creases and scratches added in OldPic Agent.

Apps apps and more apps!

With the purchase of a new app; picfx, I now have 60 photo editing apps, not including my video editing apps, DSLR tools and miscellaneous photo apps. Many of the newer apps have some pretty powerful features so hopefully I will be able to produce some interesting pictures. I currently have over a thousand pictures in my iPhone camera roll, I plan on spending some quality time playing with all of my apps to see what I can create with them.

Vista

This view is from the Courthouse clock tower in Santa Barbara. This is a panorama consisting of 7 individual shots assembled in Autostitch. The sun was low in the sky and really affected the exposure of the shots which caused some banding in the assemble image. Had I thought about it ahead of time I would have used Camera Plus to take the photos which would allow me to exposure lock the sequence, which might have created a more even image. Next time I am going to try this.

Path of Solitude

Another quick snapshot of my stepdaughter, which is really the only way to get pictures of her as she simply won't hold still for the camera. I managed to catch her as she was wandering a garden path lost in her own thoughts. I cropped out the bright sunlight at the top of the picture with PS Express then used TiltShift Generator, now one of my favorite apps, to enhance the color and blur the edges of the photo a bit.

Fat Fingers

With ever increasing complexity in the apps I've been using I have found that my fingers are way too big to use some of the tiny controls that some of the apps have. I went and bought a Griffin iPhone stylus, I will never go back to using my finger again. This stylus is great, and can be used with a very light touch, I was very surprised by this. It's been especially useful for Touch Retouch, it is sooo much easier to edit using the stylus. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Check it out here.

Abandoned

This image is inspired by an exhibition of old photographs that I saw on the Library of Congress website, "Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943" which can be seen here. I wanted to emulate the style I had seen in these old photos. This old building was the perfect subject to capture the feel of a depression era farm. For this image I used Pro HDR to take the picture, the reason behind that choice was that there was bright sun that day making for a high contast image. When using the standard camera app the front of the building was cast in very dark shadows and no detail could be seen. By using Pro HDR I was able to even out the contrast and pull up the finer details in the scene. I then processed the image in Lo-Mob to give it that old film look. I think this photo would fit right in with the Library of Congress collection.

Little Death

A chance meeting with a deceased bird in the parking lot at work one morning led to this shot. I simply could not pass the poor little thing by without memorializing the end of the little bird's valiant struggle to survive in this world. I particularly like this photo because it has something rarely seen in an iPhone camera image; true depth of field without any post processing. The color was achieved by adding a warm vintage filter in PS Express.

Reflections

Another picture of the same aircraft that I took at the Camarillo air show. I wanted to push the limits of the iPhone 4 camera so I stood directly in the glare cast by the sun reflecting off of the wing. the glare overpowered the standard camera app and it simply could not get the shot. I switched to Pro HDR to capture this image and it did a beautiful job at capturing the full dynamic range in the scene. I especially like how it really brings out the deep colors of the reflections on the polished fuselage of the Mustang. This picture does highlight one of the drawbacks of using Pro HDR however: Any moving object can create strange effects. Take a look about midway along the wing and you will notice the decapitated body walking underneath. It seems to have left it's head floating nearby above.

Warbird

I love aircraft and I attend air shows when I can. I took this picture at the Camarillo air show. This is an unedited image. I was very impressed by the detail and color reproduction that the iPhone 4 was able to manage.

Said the duck to the Frog

There were these little statues of a duck and a frog in a backyard garden that I wanted to photograph. As I was looking for interesting angles I noticed the ball lying in the grass nearby and I immediately knew how I wanted to compose my shot. Taken with Pro HDR on the iPhone 4, then processed in TiltShift Generator for the blurred edges and vignetting.

Toy Story

The view from my hotel room in Las Vegas, instead of a view of the strip I got a view of the parking lot. But the setting sun was producing some very dynamic colors and I thought it would be a good opportunity to test out an app that I had just purchased: Pro HDR. The image came out great but the scene was still boring so I put the image in TiltShift Generator and added some extreme blur, then upped the saturation just a bit. It really does kinda look like a model set.

Colors and Innocence

This is another edit I did of the same picture I took of my stepdaughter. I liked the composition of the shot enough to try something else with it. I used a different crop in PS Express, upped the saturation and did a focal blur in TiltShift Generator, the put the image back in PS Express to give it the soft edges. A very different look than the last edit I did of this picture, but I really like the effect.

Innocence

A quick snapshot of my stepdaughter. This is heavily cropped in PS Express to remove some distracting shadows in the foreground and a car in the background. The end result puts much more focus on her. With this image I was trying to capture the innocence of childhood contrasted against the somber location of the cemetery. Color editing was done in Photo FX and the rough edges are from Lo-Mob.

Shrooms!

One of the big differences I noticed between my old iPhone 3G and the iPhone 4 was the improved ability of the iPhone 4 to reproduce color. There was no color enhancement done to this image, the mushrooms really were that bright. This image is a panorama composed of two pictures taken at the indoor garden exhibition at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I assembled the images using Autostitch then used Photo FX to blur out the people and distracting hotel walls in the background. One of my more complex edits. I created the blur using the Depth of field filter in Photo FX since I needed more blur on the right side of the image than on the left, but I masked out the parts of the image that I wanted to remain in focus. A very nice effect, this is one of my favorite edits.

Painted Ladies

One of the first shots I took with my new iPhone 4. This was taken in San Francisco while my wife and I were on our honeymoon. I was amazed at the clarity of the image and the amount of detail that was visible, especially in the grass. this is an unedited pic taken with the default camera app.

By the River

This is a simple landscape scene that I took at Three Rivers on a trip to visit some relatives. The late sun and the foliage in the valley were very colorful and I wanted to capture that with the camera. Unfortunately the camera did not pick up the colors very well, but I was able to up the saturation in PS Express to regain what the camera did not quite pick up. Taken with the iPhone 3G.

Tower of Terror

Here's one of the most extreme edits I had done on the iPhone 3G to date. This image of the Hollywood Tower at Disneyland was taken near sunset, then put through Photo FX for an almost comic book look to it. The look was totally on accident but I liked it. The original pic had a couple of the large clover awnings from Bug's Life to the right of the tower that were very distracting to the image. I edited those out through careful use of the clone brush in Photo FX.

Bug's eye view

Yes I go to Disneyland a lot. This shot is taken at the Bug's Life area of California Adventure. The photo was taken close to sunset, the evening sunlight gave a nice golden luminescence to the large clover awnings. This photo was taken with the iPhone 3g and processed in TiltShift Generator.

Solar Portal. My first HDR timelapse video

My first HDR and my first time lapse video. I did this as an entry for the Gizmodo video challenge. Images were captured with my iPhone 4 using Pro HDR. Every frame is captured manually since Pro HDR lacks a time lapse feature. I spent 3 hours lying in the grass to capture all of the frames for the video. What a guy won't do for art.

You can also watch it in High Def on Youtube and on Vimeo at: http://vimeo.com/19612095

Carousel

During a fireworks show at Disneyland I managed to get this great shot of the empty carousel. I used TiltShift Generator just to add some vignetting to this image. Taken with an iPhone 3G.

Blue Mountain

The Matterhorn at Disneyland taken on a rainy night. I blurred out the foreground using Tiltshift generator to put more of the focus on the mountain itself. Taken with an iPhone 3G.

Empty Teacups

A rainy night at Disneyland closed the Teacup ride. Taken in very low light and it shows. A lot of grain in this picture. I was unable to get any real improvement in any of the apps I tried, but I think it makes a nice picture as is. Taken with an iPhone 3G

A Candid Moment with Darth Vader

I just couldn't resist this shot. Unedited iPhone 3G

Sunset in the OC

Out in the back yard at a friends house I tried to capture the full moon as it hung over the mountains which were lit by the setting sun. I was surprised at how well the camera caught the colors of the setting sun and the details in the low light below. Taken with an iPhone 3G.

Parasol

Another Disneyland shot. This one is in front of the Haunted Mansion. You can see the Nightmare Before Christmas Decorations on the balcony. I love the contrast between the colors of my wife's umbrella against the greys of the building. Unedited, taken with the iPhone 3G.

Castle in the Sky

Cinderella's castle at Disneyland during the Christmas celebration. Taking pictures in low light generates a lot of noise in the picture. I reduced most of it using PS Express.

Lighting the balloon

Snapping photos at a balloon festival, I particularly liked this shot. This is unedited from my iPhone 3G.

Tunnel

I was at Disneyland walking back to my car in the parking structure when there was this rare moment when no one was around, so I quickly snapped this photo of the empty walkway. like all of Disneyland the original photo was too clean and bright, so I used Lo-Mob to add the gritty look.

Tattoo

I met a tattoo artist through a friend of mine and my girlfriend (now wife :) ) and I decided to get tattoos. The tattoo artist was from out of town and he didn't have a local shop so we did this in my kitchen. So this is me getting my first tattoo. Ok so this one was not actually taken by me, but it was taken with my iPhone 3G. I cropped out the kitchen chairs in the back using PS Express, color enhancement and vignetting was added to the pic using Lo-Mob.

That Golden Brew

Another crappy pic taken with my iPhone 3G and edited in Color Splash. I was drinking with a buddy and took a picture of my beer.

Hot Sauce!

I was bored at Taco Bell so of course I took a picture of what i was eating.

Just a plain old picture of Taco Bell food is pretty dull, the only app I had on my iPhone 3G at the time was Color Splash. So played with that a little to relieve the boredom, this is the result.

Using the iPhone as a Photographic Tool

I've been a photography buff for as long as I can remember. However I never really pursued photography with any gusto. Back in the days of film it was expensive and time consuming, and I always had other things to do with what little time and money I had. Even in the digital age it can be expensive to get good equipment, and it's still time consuming. But my biggest problem is that I can never be bothered to carry a camera about with me all the time, which is really what you need to do if you want to get those once in a lifetime spur of the moment shots that will get you on the cover of Time magazine. Indeed I often find myself somewhere looking at something unique or some event happening and thinking to myself "That would make a great picture, I wish I had my camera with me." I do own a nice DSLR and a few lenses but alas my camera sits at home, nestled in it's fancy camera bag.

Some time ago I aquired an iPhone 3G. I never really thought much about using the iPhone's camera for much. I did not think of any cell phone camera as a serious photographic tool. I used the camera occasionally, mostly for utilitarian uses, like taking a picture of an empty toilet paper roll to remind me to buy more. The camera on the iPhone 3G isn't that good, so I didn't really use it for pictures I wanted to keep.

Then the iPhone 4 came out. I bought one. It has a much better camera then my old iPhone 3G. Shortly after buying the new iPhone I noticed a trend: I was taking more and more pictures with the iPhone. It was always with me in my pocket, so easy to whip out and snap a picture any time I wanted. It wasn't long before I started taking pictures of everything! Stupid pictures! Things like the empty plate of food I had just eaten, cockeyed street signs, my left shoe... Anything, just because I could. Most of the pictures were junk of course, but I didn't care, I loved taking pictures!

I've started to take this iPhone photography thing a little more seriously now. I like to challenge myself to see just how creative I can get with just a little cell phone camera. New apps appear almost every day that allow me to enhance or manipulate my pictures in some interesting way. I like to see what creative things I can do with these apps. To date I have downloaded more than 68 photography apps for my iPhone.

I find it enjoyable to take pictures and create something interesting from them, I thought I would share my pictures and thoughts in the hope that you the reader may also take enjoyment from them.

All of the pictures on this blog are taken and edited exclusively on the iPhone.