Iphone Photography

Thankyou for the comments left so far for the giveaway- I am loving the recommendations, random and otherwise, it's still open if you haven't commented for a chance of winning.   I have had a few photography questions in the comments so I thought I would show you via a couple of Amitie Bring Me Flowers block of the month blocks.  I have been tempted to by a camera whcihc goes beyond the standard automatic point and shoot snap shot camera (this is what I have) but being realistic, I am so much more likely to grab my iphone and ipad than fiddle around and learn how to use a SLR camera and store/transfer the photos.  Iphone has its limitations but I recently came across a superb app, VSCOcam which elevates iphone photography.  All the pictures in the giveaway post were taken with it.

Before:  Picture taken using VSCOcam with no filters.

When you take a photo on this app there is no standard iPhone touch screen focus option, you can't move in and out with your fingers, you just move closer with the camera, but it will go close up and  there are two circles- a focus which places the lens focus in a particular place and an 'exposure' option which I either move to the darkest area or in the same place as 'focus' option.  Once the picture is taken there are basic editing options like crop, rotate contrast, brightness etc.  I don't use these much beyond the first two as the filters that follow will sort out a lot of issues.

After: with filter F3

For those familiar with Instagram, VSCOcam has a series of filters but they each indiviually adjustable with a sliding scale.  I bought an extra set of filters on offer for a few dollars.  You can get really fancy with this and the VSCOcam video gives  you a huge amount of options.  

The same pic, different filter: I increased the exposure of this one and used filter C1 which has a slightly different effect.

You can play around and get a huge range of filter effects and the photos are easily exported to your camera roll and social media sites.  The app will only store a limited number of photos so I tend to export as I go.  It is a very handy app for taking photos with a theme, for example, I knew all the Swedish Bloom quilt photos would be in one blog post so I used the same filter throughout.  The weather that day was a mix of sun and cloud with a threat of a big shower so the natural lighting was variable and the filters helped perk this up.  I love it, a great, easy to use app!