We’ve teamed up with FX Photo Studio to bring you another iPhoneography Contest! With weekly prizes of a GorillaMobile for iPhone 4/4S and a grand prize of a GorillaPod SLR Zoom with Ballhead, be sure to enter your best work!
Enter the Your Day—Your Way Photo Contest here! Be sure to “like” both JOBY and FX Photo Studio on Facebook for your entry to be considered for the GorillaPod prizes!
We’ve got quite the talented team here at JOBY and a few months ago I decided to test their skills with a monthly photography contest. Each month features a new theme, folks submit their best work, then we vote for our favorites. Sticking with the theme that has taken over JOBY for the month of March, here we have our staff iPhone Photography Photo Contest!
For more awesome iPhoneography, check out the submissions to our Phone Photography Contest!
This month on the JOBY Blog, we’re all about iPhoneography. We think phonography is totally rad—three cheers for creative expression on the go! Plus, nothing beats a lightweight and decent camera that you always have with you. We put our heads together with some other phone photography experts to bring you tips and tricks, awesome apps, video tutorials, and maybe even a contest or two. Stay tuned!
Off we go! If you read nothing else from this series, read this. This super simple tip will transform your iPhoneography, guaranteed.
Auto-Exposure / Auto-Focus Lock in the Native Camera App
So you want to take a picture of your kitchen table and and the pretty tulips sitting on top of it. But, it looks like this—dark, with emphasis on the brick wall behind your subject instead of the subject itself. Here’s what you do …
Tap on the tulips to focus on them. Hold down and the camera will lock both focus and exposure on those tulips, instead of the wall behind them. This will bring your tulips into focus and correctly expose them all in one swift move. Click the camera shutter and you’ve got the perfect shot you envisioned.
It’s that easy and that awesome.
Here’s another example. The camera focused on the red brick wall in the foreground, but at this exposure, sky is totally blown out. Bummer.
So I locked focus and exposure on the lighter buildings in the background, bringing back in the sky. Now I have a more balanced photograph with more information. Plus, it’s much closer to what I saw in the moment.
Auto-Exposure / Auto-Focus Lock in Camera+
If you want even more control over the focus and exposure, Camera+ allows you to separately lock focus and lock exposure.
First, tap to choose the focus point. Then hit the + icon in the upper right corner of the focusing square. Your focus and exposure controls will separate. Move the focus square onto the main subject of your photo, and then move the exposure circle around the frame until you’ve found the exposure that suits your fancy.
You should end up with something like this—focus point where you want it and an exposure that brings out the best in your subject matter.
Very nice.
Update! SmugMug’s new FREE app Camera Awesome also allows users to separately lock focus and exposure.
Stay tuned for more awesome tips from the JOBY Team and our smart photo friends! Happy shooting!
We’ve got quite the talented team here at JOBY and a few months ago I decided to test their skills with a monthly photography contest. Each month features a new theme, folks submit their best work, then we vote for our favorites. Here’s a peak into the photographic imaginations of the JOBY team with December’s Photo Contest —Dark and Light.
Do you have a photo that perfectly captures the juxtaposition between dark and light? Share on our Facebook Page or on Twitter (@jobyinc)!
The air is crisp, the leaves are changing color, there are piles of squash outside my grocery store. It is officially fall— even here in San Francisco with the temperatures dipping into the bone-chilling 40s—and fall always reminds me of my mother.
My mother is fall color obsessed. Growing up, she would ‘torture’ my siblings and I by pointing out every instance of fall color as we drove around our California suburb. “Wow! Emily, look out there! Look that that fall color!” “Gorgeous fall color!” “Look that that Japanese maple-— beautiful fall color!” “Those leaves! Fantastic fall color!”. There are a lot of trees in the suburbs and I admired a lot of fall color.
Now, older and wiser, I can admit that my mother was right. Fall is absolutely beautiful because of the red, orange and yellow leaves set against blue skies and green grass. Here are a few tips on how best photograph this dynamic season.
Shoot in the golden hours around sunrise and sunset
Don’t ignore overcast days – the shadows are softer and the mood is different
Don’t forget to bring a tripod! – preserve detail (think ISO 100) and keep photos shake-free when shooting at dusk
Look for color contrasts – yellow leaves on a blue sky or red leaves on green grass
Slightly underexpose your shots so colors aren’t blown out
Shoot camera RAW or play with different white balance settings – sometimes Auto WB isn’t going to cut it
Try a polarizing filter to bump up contrasts between complementary colors
Play with contrast, hue and saturation in Photoshop, iPhoto, Picnik or Piscassa
Now get on it before the landscape looks like this …
Happy shooting!
