Paper Heart Camera: Audrey's post

Showing posts with label Audrey's post. Show all posts

Monday, July 23, 2012

7 steps to take amazing instagram photos plus 10 must have photo apps.

Hey Guys! This is Audrey from The Daily Wyatt and I admit I use my iPhone as my main camera more then I use my dslr camera. The main reason is because its small enough to stick in my pocket, always available plus I am an instagram-oholic. Arent you?

So today I thought I would share my tips and tricks on how to get amazing photos from your iPhone. I hope you use them to your advantage.

1. Never use the instagram camera. I notice that when I have used the instagram camera the quality is well, crap, grainy. plus you cant take multiple shots. So your stuck with that imagine until you load it to instagram.
2. Hold your phone like you would hold your camera. With two hands. The more steady you hold it the better the image will be.

3. Find the perfect light. Its just the same as when taking photos with your dslr. you look for that perfect light. do the same thing with your iPhone. The better the light, the better the picture. (you could use a tripod even.)
4. DONT ZOOM. ever. You will lose heaps of quality and your photo will be extremely pixelated and grainy even if its just a tiny bit zoomed. If you want a close up picture go closer to the object. period.

5. Clean the lens often. (duh)
6. Look for different perspectives. I know when I shoot with my dslr camera I take the time to find a different way to look at what I am shooting. I do the same with my iPhone. shoot from below, from up high, from a different side. Shoot multiple times to get the photo that looks the best to you. (you can always delete and start over.)
7. Use other photography apps to process your imagine.

The main apps I use to process my iPhone photos are:

Snapseed: Worth every penny. You can adjust everything! I mean EVERYTHING
Vscocam: This is my all time favorite filter app. Comes with 10 different filters that you then can adjust to your liking. Love this app! Love it!
ShakeitPhoto: This is my go to quick edit. It acts just like a polaroid and 9 out of ten times you use it the photo comes out looking great with not a lot of work.
PS express: I use it only to reduce noise. That's it.
Lenslight: When I want to add extra light to my photo to give it more of a dramatic feel I use this app.

Crossprocess: Its the same concept of shake it photo but gives it a more dramatic look.
Picfx: Its an all in one place for filters, textures light and so much more.
Pictueshow: I haven't use this one in a long time but I do love the frames and textures it has.
easyTITLER: The best app to add words to your photos. Gives you a ton of fronts and options to adjust the opacity of them.
Squaready: The perfect app to use when you don't want to crop you photo into a square to add it to instagram.

I hope this inspires you to take more amazing photos with your camera phone.

Do you have a favorite camera phone photo? Share them on our Facebook page here
Is there other editing apps you think we should try? Let us know in the comments.
Android users what apps do you use?
Follow us on instagram @thedailywyatt, @satakieli, @sarahmhalstead, @alitajewel ‎@summercrosbie @desirae_ra @stephaniesclark @andthenshesnapped @melissabrich leave your handler in the comments and we will check out your feeds too!

Thanks guys for taking the time to read this post have a good Monday and I will see you again next time!

Audrey from The Daily Wyatt

Monday, June 25, 2012

Auto to manual mode. Easy “how to steps” to help you get started...

Are you currently shooting on automatic? and not achieving the photos you want. We’ve all been there. Really we have.
When you control the manual settings on your DSLR camera you will have complete control over what you want the picture to look like. Why not take the time to learn just how to do it? Its scary at first. I know, I was scared. I didn't want to take the chance on missing that moment because I was missing around with my settings.

Look what I found after the rain storm today...

But once you start you will never want to go back. Plus it will cut your editing time down because your photo will be close to perfect right out of the camera with very little fine tuning.
Lets get started shall we?

“Exposure triangle”

You need to know and understand the exposure triangle. It is made up of your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Using these three components will get you light meter to zero. And once you understand just how important light is to making or breaking your photo you will be able to master the manual mode.
Your light meter will look something like this (could very depending on your camera it should be a vertical line when you look through your view finder.) –2….1…0…1…2+ when you adjust the 3 components you will want your ticker to be at zero or a little higher/lower depending on your taste. (I like mine 1 or 2 clicks higher.)

Now lets talk about each component:

“ISO”

The perfect example I learned was from this sight. She explained it like this.. If you have it set at 100 think that you just sent out 100 worker bees to bring the light back to you. If you have it set at 1600 you just sent out 1600 worker bees to bring the light back to you.

Lower ISO = less light were as Higher ISO= more light
**Remember the higher the ISO the more NOISE (grain) you will have in the photo. **
Here are a few loose guidelines for ISO settings:
Bright sun - ISO 100
Overcast - ISO 200
Deep Shade - ISO 400
Indoors on a sunny day - ISO 200 – 640
Indoors on a cloudy day - ISO 400 – 1250
Indoors at night ISO- 1600+

“Shutter Speed”

The shutter speed is the amount of time that your shutter stays open. In most cases, you want the shutter speed to be fast enough to capture your image without any blurriness.

Normally I never shoot anything under 1/80 unless I put my camera on a tripod. Settings below that could cause blurriness. Basically when I shoot photos of Wyatt I try to keep my shutter speed at 125 or higher just because I know that he will be a toddler on the move and I want to freeze the moment instead of blur that moment.

The lower your shutter speed is the more light you will let into your camera because the shutter is open longer. The higher the shutter speed is the less light will enter into your camera.
More light = more blurriness Less light = less blurriness

“Aperture/ F stop”

Changing your aperture affects the amount of light that's in your shot and the scale used to measure the aperture size is the “f-number” scale. This sounds much more complicated than it is. There is one trick to understanding it: A smaller f-stop number indicates a bigger aperture opening.(F-stops are indicated by these numbers on your camera: f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 ect.)

When shooting at a lower f/stop (ie: larger aperture: f/1.2 – f/2.8), the ‘in focus’ part of your image will be smaller and the background will be blurry - this is great for portraits, flowers and still life. Small apertures (ie: f/8 and above) cause more of the background to be in focus this is great for shooting families, interior, buildings or street life.

Remember: Lower number aperture = more light and a blurrier background / Higher number aperture = less light and a sharper background

Here's a cheat sheet to help you remember…

[via]

So in what order should you adjust these? Well it depends on what you like but what I do is this:

1. Set my aperture – I like to first control if I want a “blurry” background.
2. Set my shutter speed – remember try not to go below 1/125 you don’t want a lot of motion blur. Now if my light meter (remember this: –2….1…0…1…2+ ) is not where I want it then I…
3. Change my ISO – I try to do this one last just because I like my ISO to stay at the lowest number possible so I have less “noise/grain” in the photo and you should be able to get the exposure you want by just change the first 2 depending on how the light is where you are shooting.
Now guys this takes time to master and the only way to get better is by practicing and try out your settings and really when I started out learning manual mode I would switch it to Auto and snap a photo and then look at what settings the camera set and then I would adjust those in manual mode. Do what feels right to you and don't get discourage, keep practicing and soon you will love that you made the change to manual mode.

Audrey from The Daily Wyatt

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

How to take abnormal Christmas tree photos.

Hello!
This is Audrey from The Daily Wyatt. I want to talk to you about how fun it is to take abnormal photos of your Christmas tree.

I have a very small ghetto tree that I have had since I was 18 when I randomly moved out on my own. It was the first tree I ever bought and it has seen better days.

So this year as we set it up (yes before Thanksgiving. I know I know.) I noticed all the icky bare spots, how it tilted and it was just ugly. So when it came to taking the normal pictures of it I wanted to be a little more artistic with it. Give it more life, so I decided to concentrate on just the lights.

So I put my camera settings on 0.8 f 5.6 ISO 200 no tripod. As a clicked the shutter instead of holding my camera still I turned it in a circular motion while pointing it towards the tree which made the lights turn into little circles.

It was so simple and the only edits I did was boost the colors to make them a little brighter.
So when your taking pictures of you tree this year try and do something out of the normal. Who knows you might get something amazing.

Audrey from The Daily Wyatt

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Touch Up Tuesday

(I'm Sorry this is sooo late I schedule it and somehow it didnt post ugh.)

HELLOOOOOO!!!!
Its Audrey from The Daily Wyatt I wanted to show you that with just a few tweaks that you can turn a pretty photo into a stunning one.

As you can see the before photo was really light and not as dramatic as I like so what I did was first a clean edit (fixed the levels contrast etc.…) then I added warmth action from the PNW then I fixed the S curved to deepen the colors, sharpened it and removed any noise and was done.
That’s it. Simple.