National Portrait Gallery iPhone workshop~ Autostitch ~ BracketMode~ Snapseed

Last weekend, at the National Portrait Gallery, I had a great group of eager to learn iPhone Photographers in my workshop. We worked through setting up and using a few shooting apps and processing apps before we went into the gallery and began making images. As I was working with students helping them to make shots and use apps, the window at the end of the Modern wing caught my eye. I loved the whimsical stools arranged in front of it on the square tile floor, as well as the light in the window that was filtered by translucent blinds. I wanted to capture the whole scene and in order to do that I had to make 38 shots using the BracketMode app which captures two shots rapidly, one capturing the highlights in the scene and one capturing the dark areas in the scene. I then blended the shots together in Autostitch. While I was showing a student the process I began to process the shot in Snapseed and he and I both liked the way the image was developing. The new RetroLuxe filter in Snapseed is great for creating a moody feeling in the image.

 

This scene made me laugh! It was so real you just had to look twice. The artist who created this was so creative.  I used ClassicPan to shoot the vertical image eliminating distracting elements on the left side of the scene. Then I processed the image in Snapseed adding a RetroLuxe filter effect, border and toning.

This is also a 38 shot panorama made with the same process as the opening image, using BracketMode for the capture and Autostitch for the stitch. I just loved this scene with the red sofas, tile floor, green carpet and window. When the stitch was done it was a little short on the left side so I used Anti-Crop to add to the image on the left. It was not a perfect add so I used a little Glaze, after processing the image in Snapseed to obscure the issue.When making stitched images it is always a good idea to begin and end the shooting series well beyond the area of the scene you want and overlap images by twenty percent to get a good stitch.

In this image you can see where Anti-Crop added image area on the left side behind the red sofa, but only in a fair way. If I had not told you would you have noticed? I will be conducting more iPhone workshops with Capital Photography Center in  Baltimore, Washington, DC and Horizon Photography Workshops in Chesapeake City, Md. I hope you can join me for some iPhone fun! Learn about creative apps and make some great images!

The Gymbl iPhone Accessory

Capture: BracketMode Process: Autostitch; Snapseed

 The Gymbl is a fun little attachment  I used today to create these images made at The Fire Museum of Maryland in Towson. I have had the Gymbl for a while but just have not had the right time to get out and use it. I attached it to a spare camera plate and was able to use it on my regular tripod. It was easy enough to maneuver with the custom designed case that attaches to the head. I was amazed at how seamlessly the images were stitched because of the deign of the Gymbl accessory.  The Gymbl has a gimbal panoramic head that lets you rotate the iPhone around its optical center.

 Each one of these images began with vertical images and then they were stitched together with the app Autostitch which not only will blend the images but the bracketed exposures at the same time.
I made a few other shots with the iPhone but will get those processed later for another post.

Hipstamatic and Autostitch

Every Thursday night that I am in town I try to make it to the Baltimore Camera Club. Tonight a few of us met early for a planning session and we sat outside of Starbucks in Mt. Washington. One member was talking about using his pan head to make panoramas and as I was listening I thought if they only knew how easy it was to make an iPhone pano..so I got up and walked over to the old warehouse and made 9 shots with the Hipstamatic. I then loaded those shots into the app AutoStitch and it blended them as they are here. I added the sun in Juxtaposer and added some textures in Iris. I enjoy the odd alignment of the edges so I left them.

Autostitch App and the Cylburn Mansion House

Panorama's with the iPhone are lots of fun to make and I have been playing with the technique, honing into one I like best. The image here of the Cylburn Mansion House was made by combining 64 individual images I made hand held. Crazy right!? Well, I made the shots in BracketMode which gave me two shots of each section of the building, one exposed for the highlight and one exposed for the dark areas. This app lets you keep shooting so you do not have to stop and process the combined exposure shot.  It then saves the two images to the camera roll for future processing. Combining the images can be done later. The beauty of this process is you can continue to move from section to section capturing images to blend for the final image you want. So the 64 shots represented 32 sections of this building. In AutoStitch I selected all 64 shots and the app blended them not only for the pano but also for the exposure. (I learned that from an iPhone buddy.) How cool is that! The shape of the above image is what happens when you stitch them together and is how AutoStitch renders the files before cropping down. I did not crop this one as I liked the funky shape. I did go on to process the image with some of my favorite apps for an artistic rendering using; DynamicLight:ArtistaSketch:Iris for layering and blending, PerfectPhoto for sharpening and Crop'n'Frame for the frame and mat.

I shared this image with some iPhone friends and I received some feedback on the opening image from an iPhone buddy who thought the smokey area above the chimney was a bit distracting, and I thought the branch on the right was also distracting so I went into TouchRetouch App and used the clone tool to spot them out and cropped the image in Iris. There is truly an app for everything you could do in Photoshop with a large DSLR file. Oh and I added a ray of light above the chimney.

Then I used the VintageScene app to further enhance my vision of the image here.

And I also made a close up stitch using 14 images of one of the exterior windows I found so beautiful in the design and age with peeling paint around the frame.