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Believe it or not, ALL the photos in this post were shot with my Iphone4s! That’s right, more often than not, I reach for my Iphone while on vacation to snap photos of my adventures. This week we are on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Yesterday we went skydiving at pacific skydiving and afterwards went to the Dole Plantation worlds largest maze and then to turtle beach to catch the sunset. Below are a few photos I took during that time and I want to share with you the techniques and apps I use to turn these “snapshots” into photography worthy of a postcard. If you want to take better pictures with your Iphone make sure to watch Creative Lives “Iphoneography” free online workshop on Jan 5th – 6th!

It’s all about light… just like all photography having the right light and knowing what to do with it is half the battle. Sunsets in Hawaii are pretty much perfect every day so that helps a little bit… This image was shot with the iphone’s automatic settings, I just pointed the camera and took the shot. Then I used a MY FAVORITE CAMERA app called Camera+ to process the photo and add the enhancements. I think I used the Sunset preset and the Purple Haze effect.

I actually used this photo to send a postcard to my family! The light was amazing for this shot so this one was almost perfect straight out of the Iphone’s camera. But it just needed a little pop and I wanted to add a border and a caption for the postcard. So, I used the Camera+ app again to enhance the image. The CLARITY preset is by far my favorite setting and just adds that extra POP! Then , I cropped the image to 2×3 (the aspect ratio of the postcard) and applied the “antique boarder” and the caption. You can actually insert the GPS location and date/time the photo was taken from right in the app! Awesome! Then I used Apple’s new Postcard app to send the postcard to all my family members… (and also one to myself!)


Here is an image that took a bit more work to produce the final image. The Iphone has a very limited dynamic range that it can capture in a single shot. These two examples are the original images I took. You can see in the image on the left how blown out the sunset looks and how dark the the other one looks with no detail in the foreground. I tapped on the turtle in the first image and then on the sun for the second shot. Once I take the two photos (holding the photo as still as possible) I open the images up in True HDR to combine the images to produce a higher dynamic range. The app is pretty straight forward and you can actually take the image within the app but I prefer to shoot them manually and then process them later so I can enjoy the scenery longer… (and take more photos!) After I save the HDR out of True HDR I then bring it into Camera+ for final processing. I warmed it up a bit and cropped to 2×3. See final image below…

Here are a few screen shots of the Camera+ iPhone app and the settings I typically use.


This last shot is from our amazing dinner last night at Morimoto’s Sushi restaurant at The Modern Honolulu hotel in Wakiki. The iPhone shoots great macro shots and the little bit of movement adds that extra pop to the photo.