Tag Archives: photography

White Balance in Phone Photography

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Continuing with the idea of producing a StillWalks video entirely from photos and sound recorded on my iPhone, one of the difficulties with doing this is the lack of control you have of white balance with the phone camera.

It is possible to get some degree of balance of  light by trying different angles for a shot and avoiding, where possible, extreme differences of light. Other than that, you have to take pretty much what you get and do what you can in post processing. Zooming can help in some circumstances but I try not to use this much as it loses what crispness there is in a shot as the zoom is digital rather than optical.

You can buy all sorts of add-ons for phone cameras these days, such as zoom or macro lenses, tripods, etc., but my aim is to find out how, if at all practical it is to produce a StillWalks video with the basic iPhone and free apps.

Having said that, I am using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to make the adjustments necessary for video production. The images below are the same shot but with  different adjustments made but I am not going to go into the details of this now – I am keeping that for another day (or blog).

Suffice it to say that there is more work involved in the post processing of images taken on my phone than there is for those taken on my camera, so what I have saved in not having to lug heavy kit around with me, I have lost in the time needed afterwards in preparing the images for use. Hopefully this may be less the case with the sound recording!

Forest Walk, Fforest

Forest Walk, Fforest

Fixing Phone Photography

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Fixing photographs taken on a phone is easier said than done. Having said that, there is nothing like a challenge. How far you go with any adjustments will depend on the results you want to achieve but there is inevitably going to be some compromise in the end.

Below are different versions of one of the phone photographs taken in the woods at Fforest (see previous posts). The HDR option was switched on and so I had two versions to work with – but neither one was satisfactory! Two much strength in the sunny highlights in the original and too much green saturation in the HDR version. Some darks needed lifting, others not. Some highlights needed recovery, some not.

The first image is the one I will use. The second two images are the two (adjusted) versions of the original shot. The adjustments I made in Adobe Lightroom were not enough to satisfy me. The solution was to combine selected areas of the two versions in Photoshop.

Comments very welcome on this issue.

Fforest Forest-3

Fforest Forest-3 Original and HDR combined and adjusted

Fforest Forest 2

Fforest Forest 2 HDR adjusted

 

Fforest Forest 1

Fforest Forest 1 Original – adjusted

The last two photos are the original and HDR versions of another shot which are both in their original state from the phone. They illustrate the problem quite well.

Fforest Original

Fforest Original

Fforest HDR

Fforest HDR

Phone Photography From Fforest

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Fforest – for those of you unfamiliar with the Welsh language, the name of the place, Fforest, is only pronounced with an “F” sound rather than a “V” because there are two “F”s in the spelling. There seems more logic to this than spelling phone or photography with a “ph” but then that’s the English language for you!

I have picked out these two scenic views from the area I live because I intend them to take their places at the beginning and end of the StillWalks video I am working on using only my phone. The field recording that will be used was done on my phone as well.

I know that I cannot expect to achieve the same quality as with my DSLR cameras and lenses or the sound kit I normally use, but considering so much web content is viewed on mobile devices these days, I thought it would be worth testing this mobile kit in the context of StillWalks production and make a comparison. So I will be reporting back on this project with my conclusions.

The photos below are the HDR versions from my iPhone 4S. They have also had some adjustments made in Adobe Lightroom.

Phone Fforest Walk - Start

Phone Fforest Walk - End

Wildlife Habitat

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All images from this series of posts are available at StillWalks Photography.

The StillWalks video “Old Railway Track Walk” features many of the things you will find in a habitat like this – one that has been left to its own devices.

Over more than thirty years the trees have grown up, the brambles thickened, the wild flowers spread and I imagine the unseen wildlife is many times more abundant than that which we can see.

The photos below follow from yesterday’s post and are some of those taken for the StillWalks video.

Old Railway Walk-Cow ParsleyOld Railway Walk

Old Railway Walk-Spider

Early Morning Sounds

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I am currently working on the photography and sound from a production day in mid Summer at Troserch Woodland, Carmarthenshire, South Wales.

The unique field recording of the walk is absolutely essential if a sense of the location is to be conveyed. This sound clip near the start of the walk has a time stamp of 4:43 on the morning of 20th July and whilst the the images remind me of what the sky looked like and that there was a horse in the field, the recorded sounds take me (and you too, I hope) straight to the time and place and give me so much more information.

Sunrise at Troserch

Sunrise at Troserch

Good Morning!

Good Morning, you’re up early!

Mint, Mint and More Mint

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I was going to post a picture of last night’s orange moon but the photos didn’t work out as well as I would have liked – I wasn’t using a tripod and that was a mistake.

So here is something I cooked up earlier! You can’t have too much fresh mint in my opinion! If a recipe says to add mint, I always add probably twice as much as the recipe says – just because I love it!

Courgettes, peas and mint with pasta and parmesan cheese has got to be one of my favourites. This is a recipe from Rose Elliot’s “Little Book of Pasta”.

Garden Flowers-Mint Garden Flowers-Mint Garden Flowers-Mint Garden Flowers-Mint