Tag Archives: iphone

Hipstamatic – My Preferred iPhone Camera App

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I should have written this post a long time ago, as I’ve been using Hipstamatic ever since I got my iPhone. First of all I must say that I am not affiliated with the creators of this app in any way, I simply love this app!

Wine Glass
So what is it? Simply put “Hipstamatic” is an alternative app to iPhone’s native camera application. It is very different though. This app attempts to emulate the ancient plastic film cameras in a very realistic way. Its creators put a lot of thought in the design and functionality of this app, and they keep improving it. Since this app emulates film camera, it has a virtual film loaded into it, and the great thing about it is that you can change this film. For example they have different types of B&W films. But it is not all – you can also swap virtual lenses on the Hipstamatic camera, each lens creating a different effect in the resulting photograph, and you also can swap flashes!

Coca Cola Bottles

Even though all these features are virtual, their effect on the final photograph is very real, and I find it very interesting. There are many combinations of flash/lens/film that you can use to achieve the look that you want.
Candle Light
Currently you can purchase this app from the Apple Store for $1.99 ($2.49 in Australia), and it comes with basic set of lenses and films. Then you can purchase additional “Hipstapacks” (packages of lens+film) from inside the application.

Evil Light

Though I found a few combinations of lenses and films that I particularly like, and have been using them a lot for my daily photo section, I still have tons of fun playing with different combinations creating different new looks for my photos.

Memories

If photography is your hobby, passion, or you just like playing with your iPhone, I highly recommend this app. In my opinion it worth every penny.

Till the next time, take care!

Greg.

Benefits of My Daily iPhoto Project

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On November 2009 I decided to start a project in which I would post to my blog one photo a day , which you can see on the sidebar. I got iPhone 3Gs as a present from my sister back then, and wanted to improve my compositional skills. So I set up an application that allowed me to post photos that I take with my iPhone directly to Photopathway.

I must say right away that I didn’t success in posting a photo every single day. It was and still is too hard for me because I don’t want to post just any photo. I want to post photos that have at least some artistic value, and I simply can’t create such photos on a daily basis. But I post at least 2 – 3 photos a week.

As I said – I started this project to improve my compositional skills but recently I realized that there is one additional huge benefit to it. A few days ago I looked at my whole collection of daily photos. As I looked at each photo from the past to the present, memories started emerging in my head. Memories from each day when I shot the photo. But not only I remembered where and why I shot the photo, but most of the times I could remember that whole day!

So this project is also my “visual diary”. I even don’t have to write anything in this diary. Just by looking at my photographs I can remember many many things that happened on that day, what my mood was, and what my thoughts were.

I suggest everyone to try this photo-a-day thing, and even if not every day then at least few times a week. And my conclusion from all this is – to try and take photos more frequently, and also try to make such photos that will make it easier later to remember the happenings of that day.

Does anyone else has visual diary?

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Cheers

Greg.

Greek Church and Being Creative

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I think that one of the most important aspects of photography is about joy of creation, expressing yourself and enjoying every minute of it. I always try to be creative, and though I don’t always get the desired results from my experiments I just continue trying. For me there is no other way. I try to put my heart and soul into my work mixed with feeling and emotions.

Today I’d like to share with you one of my attempts at creativity. It was a nice autumn weekend in Israel when me and Ira went to the Upper Galilee region to do a walking track near the Sea of Galilee. On our way back we stopped to visit the Greek Church of the 12 Apostles. This church always attracted me when I was driving by with its’ red roofs but I never had the chance to actually get inside.

This time we had about an hour, so we decided to finally give this church a closer look. I was so tired from our trip that I left my Canon DSLR in the car. I just didn’t have any mental mood for photography. But the closer we got to the church the stronger grew my desire to photograph it. Eventually I decided to photograph it with my iPhone.

This Greek church is very beautiful and is also located in a beautiful place. When we returned to our car I was surprised to find out that I took about fifty photographs of the church and its surroundings from variety of different sides and angles.

Another important aspect of photography (again, in my opinion) is to know how to choose your best photos, and to be brave enough to delete most of the rest. Otherwise you’ll end up with tons of photographs, which are very similar to each other (a tiny difference in a crop here, and in viewing angle there).

Thus on our way back (Ira drove the car) I went over all the photos of the Greek church that I took and deleted about 90% leaving only the ones I though were most successful. After that I started thinking – what would be the best way to present these photos in a way that would show the Greek Church of the 12 Apostles in all its beauty and also reveal some of the architectural details.

Eventually I decided to create a photo-collage of all the best photos. During the following months I was busy with other projects (including trip to Prague) and only recently got the time to put the idea of a photo-collage to test. It took me quite some time to do that as I had to change sizes, crops and other things in order to create what I had in mind.

Here is the collage of the Greek Church of the 12 Apostles. Remember that all the photos here were taken with my iPhone, and don’t judge the quality too harsh đŸ™‚

And as always feel free to leave comments!

Cheers,

Greg.

Greek Church of the 12 Apostles

Greek Church of the 12 Apostles. Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Shooting Panoramas with iPhone

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At first this thought might sound crazy to you as it sure sounded to me, but then I thought that I could at least try to do that. Since my iPhone is always with me and my camera isn’t (due to circumstances beyond my control of course! ) it had already been more than a few occasions on which I really wanted to make a panoramic image but couldn’t.

So I decided to see if there are any apps for iPhone that can help me create panoramas. During my research I found several applications that  were created for this purpose. But after trying to use them I found out that most applications don’t do a good enough job – either the whole process was too time-consuming and difficult or the result wasn’t satisfying. And then I found application named AutoStitch.

First of all I want to say that I am not affiliated with makers of this application in anyway, and I don’t receive any benefits if you decide to buy this application after reading this article. I am writing this only because I loved this app and want more people to enjoy it.

AutoStitch really did the job so well that I was truly amazed at the results! And the process is also very simple. All you need to do is to take photos for panorama with your usual iPhone camera application. Just make sure that each photo overlaps with the next one at about 30 percent. Then you open the AutoStitch application, simply choose the photos that you want to create panorama from, and let the application to do all the work.

After AutoStitch finished, you will see the final image and also will be able to crop it as you wish. Then you can save it to your photos. There are several great things about AutoStitch that I liked very much:

1. The panorama creation process is pretty fast and simple.

2. The result is very impressive – photos are stitched perfectly together, and if you made each shot correctly, the final result is just great!

3. The final panorama can be saved at the maximal resolution of the iPhone, what I mean is take for example 5 photos with your iPhone, stitch them together in AutoStitch, and the final resolution that you’ll get will be 5 times bigger than single photo resolution.

4.You don’t have to use tripod or to be extreeemely careful! Just try to maintain the initial angle of shooting, and make sure that your photos overlap with each other. AutoStitch will do the rest.

I’d like to show you two of the panoramas that I created using AutoStitch. Please note that I reduced the resolution of these images in order to fit them here.

High Tech District in Tel Aviv

High Tech District in Tel Aviv. Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Alonei Itzhak Nature Reserve

Alonei Itzhak Nature Reserve. Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

And now here is what welcome screen of AutoStitch looks like, when you open the app in the iPhone:

AutoStitch Welcome Screen

In conclusion – AutoStitch is a great application for creating panoramas in your iPhone. It is cheap, simple to use, and delivers great results.

If this article was helpful to you, or you have additional thoughts on creating panoramic photos in iPhone, you are welcome to leave comments to this article or drop me an email to greg at photopathway dot com.

 

Daily Photo from my iPhone – Introduction

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About a week ago I received a birthday present from my sister. Though my birthday is still a few months away, my sister knew that I really wanted this present so she didn’t keep me waiting and simply gave it to me – the new shiny iPhone 3Gs!!! And, of course, first thing I did with it was to check out the camera it has. I played with it a little and the best thing about this camera is that it is always with me. I noticed that amount of photos that I take grew significantly since I first laid my hands on the iPhone. In addition I got several programs for iPhone that create various effects to the photos and enjoyed playing with those also.

In order to improve my photographic skills (mostly composition-wise) I decided to take on a mission (!) – post one photo each day, here on my blog, directly from the iPhone. Each day I will choose one photo from my daily shots and post it on the sidebar. This way in the future I will be able to see my evolution in photography from these daily photos. I also think that it can be interesting to you, my readers. And yes, I know that the technical quality of the photos from iPhone is much worse than from my DSLR, this is why I am aiming mostly to improve my compositional photographic skills (and not technical) through this project.

As always, your thoughts, comments, critiques and anything else that you’d like to share are highly appreciated!

Till the next post, take care!

Cheers
Greg.