I already have a few apps that do reflections. Some with water, one without. Photo Reflection is a free app that offers more than the free water reflection apps do. There are 4 different reflection layouts to choose from. You have control over how much is reflected and you can even fade out the reflection with a gradient. Photo Reflection even offers some basic editing tools. Not bad for a free app.
I shot this with ProHDR and edited with SimplyHDR before using Photo Reflection.
Yeterday I went out to Montaña de Oro state park in Los Osos, CA to catch the sunset. I ended up getting there long before the sunrise because I had to drop my dad off to pick up his car. Having all that extra time allowed me to walk along the bluffs and pick out my perfect spot.
I set up the tripod on the edge of a cliff and sat there for over 2 hours waiting for the perfect light, hoping there wouldn’t be an earthquake. Mostly because I didn’t want to see my gear go over the edge…who cares if I did haha. As I waited, I tried to shoot with my iphone a number of times, and the camera just couldn’t handle the wide dynamic range of the scene no matter what I did. It wasn’t until the sun was about to disappear that I got something useable.
One thing I noticed while sitting in the same spot for a couple of hours was I became much more aware of my surroundings. I was picking up on little details that I hadn’t noticed at first. It certainly helped that the cell phone service was very spotty. That forced me to be present instead of messing around online.
We have a few opening up around the yard now.
I tried something different here by blending an NIR version with one I edited in Snapseed. I had like 7 different versions of this image, but this is my favorite.
I didn’t plan on going to the mission. Mostly because I didn’t even know it was there. When I drove by and saw the sign I had to stop and check it out. I could almost feel the history when I stepped into the old buildings. Its the most extensively restored mission in the state. The buildings are all staged to look the way they probably did back when the mission was still in use.
If you’re ever in Santa Barbara wine country, go check out the mission in between wine tasting. I recommend it over the pathetic waterfall thats nearby. I’ll have to share a pic of it later to show you how sad it was.
Heres a BW version because I feel like I couldn’t get the color version as vibrant as I wanted.
I also took some pictures of the mission with my D7000 that I hope will turn out well. I need to get motivated to edit today since yesterday I couldn’t. Its kind of hard working on iPhone stuff and Nikon stuff at the same time. Hopefully I won’t be forced to choose one or the other anytime soon.
This was taken in Solvang, a Danish town in California. Its a total tourist trap, but the architecture and colors are very interesting.
Below is the BW version created with Snapseed. Their BW engine seems much improved after the last update.
This one was taken more on the edge of the town. Thats why you don’t see tourists everywhere.
I went on a little adventure yesterday down to Santa Barbara county to check out a waterfall and go wherever else the road took me. The waterfall was pretty disappointing after visiting the Columbia River Gorge in October. I doubt much can compare to the gorge though.
I drove between all the vineyards and somehow didn’t stop to do any tasting. I should have because the light sucked for a few hours. I shot a variety of things with my phone and Nikon. Besides the waterfall, I shot an old mission, a Danish town, some curious cows, and this awesome lupine field I stumbled upon while taking the back roads home.
I think I have something like 45-50 photo apps on my phone right now. Thats after deleting a bunch that aren’t up to my standards. For this image, I used more apps than I ever have on a single image.
I’m pretty surprised I remembered all of that. You should click on it to see the large version.
So what do you think of the final outcome? Was it worth the trouble?
I also want to share a few blog posts that I contributed to recently. This one is on iphoneography, instagram, and being part of the in crowd. I’ve enjoyed my recent conversations with Shannon. She knows what shes talking about.
I did two posts for Mariam where I shared what I think helped me become not only a better photographer, but a more creative individual. Here they are: 1 & 2. In the second post, I share a popular training website that offers 24 hour free trials to all of their videos. Go check it out!
I was fortunate enough to get a couple of apps from developers this weekend. All of the images in this post were made using Kaleidocam. I also used LensLight on the first image to add the glowing sun to the middle.
I told the developer of Kaleidocam I’d wait until the update to give it a proper review. After seeing these images you might be tempted to just buy it before then. Its super easy to use with a live view of the effect. Thats all I’ll say for now.
I also wanted to thank you for voting for me in the recent contest. I took 2nd place and got $20. The winner was another landscape with a road. You can check out all of the winners here.
This is another photo from rural Ashland. I tried something different by adding the moon to this image with LensLight. I got the promo code yesterday and plan on doing the review after I’ve had enough time to experiment with it.
Shot with ProHDR, edited with Snapseed and FilterStorm. I’m still nervous everytime I use FilterStorm because it crashes more than any other photo app I have. Of course it crashed today just as I was saving 5 minutes worth of work.
Hope you’re having a lazy weekend. I’m going to crawl back into bed now 
The other day I was trying to take pictures of this bench we have in the garden, but it just wasn’t working. Yesterday I saw the shadow on the cement and felt like the pattern was interesting enough.
Created with camera+ and Snapseed.
***If any of you are looking to print on canvas soon, CanvasPop is running a promotion for 25% off if you order by monday with MOTHERSDAY25 as the promo code.
They also gave me a promo code for $25 off (good until May 8) for participating in a contest, but I’m not going to use it. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I’ll give it to you.
LensFlare is an app by BrainFeverMedia that allows you to add a wide variety of lens flares and a handful of textures to your image. The selection is quite impressive for the price. The best thing about LensFlare is its very easy to use. Touch where you want the flare to go, pinch with two fingers to adjust size, and twist with two fingers to rotate.
You can also adjust the brightness and color of the flare. Below that is the opacity slider for the texture if you add any to your image.
If you want to add more than one flare, tap on the 2nd icon from the right to pull up the screen below. Choose Render (add flare)…obviously. While we’re on this screen, I’ll add that you can also just save the flare(s) instead of the flare(s) on top of the image. I’ll show an example I made by mistake at the end.
Thats all there is to the app, its very easy with some cool textures that you’ll see in the examples below. These are sample images that come with the app so you can practice on good photos.
The flare and texture below were suppose to be applied to the boat image, but I must have pressed the wrong save button. This is what you get when you just save the flares.
Here is the promo video for LensFlare.
http://www.brainfevermedia.com/apps/LensFlare.html
Conclusion
If you’re a fan of lens flares or you’re into doing some serious photo manipulation on your phone, then LensFlare is a must have. It’s really excellent at what it does and I think its a steal at this price. Having said that, I don’t think this app is for all photographers. I see it as a great tool for the more creative types.
Rating: 5/5
Price: iPhone 0.99 iPad 2.99 (iPad version includes the LensLight app)
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.2 or later
***Full disclosure, I did not pay for this app, I asked for a promo code so I could review it. I’m not being offered any compensation for this review. ***
Name that boardwalk. I think you’ve seen it plenty of times already. This is another photo from Oso Flaco Lake. The original was rather bland, so it sat on my phone for a while until I knew what to do with it. Recently, I’ve been using Tadaa….a lot. Some of the filters are really good, and the clarity slider is awesome, so I knew I was going to use Tadaa for the finishing touches.
First, I used Snapseed to add a little drama and I used the new center focus to direct the viewer’s eye =D. Then I used a filter in Tadaa to add the tone and increase the vignette around the edges. I also used a little clarity to sharpen the image.
If you do join Tadaa, look me up. My username is iphonephotog. Or, you might find my images in half of the feeds right now because they are trending, featured, and in the 24 hour charts. I’ll be happy to share your best images to help you get more followers.
**The voting is open again for the contest I entered. Please go vote for my country road image. Its the one in my previous post if you’re not familiar with it.
I had suggested to them that the center focus operated more like darken/lighten center from color efex pro and it looks like thats what we’re seeing in the new update. I’m so pleased with the way this tool works now. I rarely used center focus before, but now I think I’ll be using it a lot more often now that there are a number of great presets and you have the ability to set the point of center focus. I think its got to be the best vignette tool on the iphone now because of how natural it looks.
The other thing they updated was the black and white tool. Now you can add color filters to affect the contrast. I don’t know why this wasn’t there to begin with. I can feel comfortable deleting simply b&w now because I only kept that around in case I wanted to use a color filter.
One thing missing that I asked for was the ability to add structure in the selective adjustments. Hopefully we’ll see that in a future update.
*** I just found out that they are restarting the voting tomorrow because of issues with the server. I’ll ask for your vote again tomorrow or the next day because it will run for 48 hours. Thank you if you took the time to vote today.***
Thank you all for helping me choose which picture to submit to the contest. I was 90% sure I was going to submit NIR sunset, but at the last second, I went with country road because it was the favorite here and everyone had nice things to say about it.
I saw a sneak peek of the other entries yesterday. There is some stiff competition, and there are also some that are clearly not landscapes, but I’m not running the contest. Now I almost wish I went with NIR sunset just to stand out among the great ones haha. Oh well. Now we vote!
Unfortunately, the voting is a little annoying. The images come up in a random order and there are no links to individual images. So, if you’d like to TRY and vote for my country road image, you can go here. I just spent about 10 minutes trying to find my photo by clicking “skip image” so I don’t vote for anyone else. I really don’t expect any of you to commit that much time to trying to help me out with a vote so I can win $100. But, if you have nothing better to do…
Yesterday was a challenging day and by the time the golden hour started I decided I needed to just jump in my car and catch the sunset somewhere. The problem was I didn’t know where I was going. Normally thats how I operate, but not at sunset because there is only so much time before the light is gone.
I cruised by the beaches, but didn’t feel like shooting there AGAIN (trust me, it does get old.) I headed inland to San Luis Obispo with an idea in my mind that I’d find a rural spot with a field against the mountains. It was a little tougher than I expected to find something like that in good light.
As I was driving, that little voice in my head said “Turn around!” So I flipped a u-turn and pulled off on some random road and drove back a little ways to find an open field just before the sun went down. This would be a great spot for a portrait session if it wasn’t on private property.
Both images were shot with ProHDR and I made only minimal edits in Snapseed. In the second image, the sun had stopped shining on the field, which meant a slightly slower shutter speed was used. Thats why the wind through the grass gave it a cool painterly effect that you can see better if you click on the image and zoom in.
