Category:Science & Technology
Last week, I started a new series of blog posts on taking photos with an iPhone. In that 1st episode, I talked about one of my favorite camera apps: Camera+. Today, I will share that other favorite camera app: Hipstamatic.
Hipstamatic is by far the coolest app if you like those vintage style photos that are still very popular on Instagram and other social media. Their interface turns your iPhone in a vintage camera. They have tons of different lenses, film types and flash emulators to give your photos that vintage look. And you can endlessly combine all those elements to change the look your photos.
When you have Hipstamatic in its traditional vintage camera mode–the ClassicMode–all you have to do is shake your iPhone to randomize the lens, film and flash type.
I want to have a little more control over the type of lens and film I use though, so I use the new ProMode: it allows for manual control, control over the format of your photos, and you can easily store your favorite combinations of lens, film and flash. I like to use it for snapshots and behind the scenes photos at my photo shoots. I will save the photos to my iPhone’s camera roll of course so I can share them on social media.
I have 2 favorites I use very often: Lucas AB2 lens + BlacKeys B+W film + Dreampop flash for black & white, and Watts lens + Pistil film + Tasty Pop flash for color.
I get plenty of questions about my iPhone photos. Questions like “What app do you use to take your photos?” and “How do you edit your photos?” or “You must be using Photoshop to edit your photos, right?”. So, let me address these questions in a series of blog post.
Caveat: I am and always been an iPhone user. My tips & tricks and app recommendations apply to iOS devices only.
Anyway, let’s start at the beginning: my favorite apps for taking photos with my iPhone are Camera+ and Hipstamatic. I will talk about Camera+ now and I will cover Hipstamatic in a later blog post.
It’s also good to know that Adobe‘s latest release of Lightroom Mobile now includes a camera supports shooting in DNG on the iPhone. I will be looking into that in the next few weeks. It might be a good alternative to Camera+ if you are a Lightroom user like me.
I love Camera+ for its versatility. It obviously has an automatic mode as you might expect from any iPhone camera app. But you can also run it in full manual mode giving you control over shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and focus point. The thing that sticks out for me is the possibility to independently choose a focus point and an area where to measure exposure form. Not many other camera apps for iPhone have that many manual controls.
I also like the fact that you can also control the flash to be always off and always on. I prefer not to use flash as it is very harsh light on an iPhone, so I keep my flash turned off most of the time. But when I need a bit of extra light, I prefer to have continuous light coming from my iPhone rather than harsh flash light.
I have the output of the app set to the highest possible quality. This gives me a little more room for editing afterwards. And I keep the zoom function of the camera disabled. I will explain why in a later blog post.
And with the option to choose from a wide format, square or the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, and timer functions, Camera+ is really my go-to-camera on the iPhone for stills. Camera+ is not a free app but it will be money well spent if you decide to buy this app.
It has plenty of build-in features for editing and sharing to social media. However I never use them. I save my photos directly to the iPhone’s camera roll and use other applications to edit and share.
On Christmas Evening 1968, the crew of NASA‘s Apollo 8 were the 1st to broadcast from orbit around the moon. Their broadcast included a beautiful message of holiday cheer.
This photo of my little buddy #duckie is an homage to the crew of Apollo 8. Prints of the earth and the moon–done by my good friend Glenn at Studico–and some crafts & arts, I put together this scene. I back lit the earth with an Elinchrom studio strobe, setup the print of the moon and #duckie on a couple of C-stands and lit them with a studio strobe and a small softbox. And look… #duckie is happily floating in orbit around the moon.
Happy Holidays!
My Buddy Michel Keppens and I have found a little bit of paradise hidden in the heart of Belgium. We had been talking on and off about doing a photo shoot together. Not just something that you trough together in a couple of minutes, grab the 1st model you can find, head on out, start to shoot and hope for the best.
We wanted something that was a bit more carefully planned. Since it is summer, we decided on a swim wear shoot: somewhere on a tropical location. We found this little river in a nature preserve in Belgium that could fit our needs. We went location scouting, put together a mood board, blocked 3 dates in our calendar, booked models and makeup artists for all dates, and… Last week we went out for our 1st shoot in the series.
Models Magalie and Lizzy joined us on our 1st trip to the Ardennes. They were impressed by the beauty of the location. If you consider that I found the location doing some Geocaching, that is kinda cool.
Michel and I had booked models that would mind posing in latex swim wear. Because, of course, no shoot this big with me as a photographer would be complete without it involving latex. Lizzy wore a red polka-dot set from Westward Bound and Magalie wore a daring one-piece suit designed by William Wilde.
I enjoyed a day out with these 2 lovely ladies and my buddy Michel and I look forward to another shoot in this series. I will leave you with this little look behind the scenes with Magalie and Michel.
KSC is really an historic place: in the 60’s and 70’s NASA launched all Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions from here. And as a teenager, I used to sit in front of the TV and watch every Space Shuttle launch that would air. NASA has decided to retire their Space Shuttle fleet and they opened up a beautiful new Space Shuttle expo at the Cape.
I can not begin to describe how excited I was to meet Space Shuttle Atlantis. But let me say this: I did not say a word for 45 minutes… I just grinned. A big fat grin from ear to ear.
And I’m sure KSC’s role in history has not been played out yet. Their massive VAB building still stands and it’s being prepared for future missions to the moon and to Mars. As are the launch complexes 39, 40 and 41. They will be used by SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and NASA’s own SLS. NASA’s Orion 1 was out on the launch pad when we visited last November. It was successfully launched later in the year and will keep NASA flying well into the 21st century.
No visit to KSC is complete without paying tribute to those astronauts that got killed while doing their job. I always go to the monument that honors the crews of Apollo 1, Space Shuttle Challenger and Space Shuttle Columbia to salute the brave men and women that perished in the line of duty.
Kennedy Space Center, … Cape Kennedy, … Cape Canaveral, … Space Coast, … It doesn’t how you call it, it’s NASA‘s biggest space port and this place is iconic. No trip to central Florida is complete without a visit to the Cape. As a little kid, I was fascinated with anything that had to do with space travel. 1 visit to KSC was not enough: this was my 4th visit. 1 day at KSC is never enough: we spent 2 whole days at on the Space Coast last November.
I still remember the 1st time I was out there. I was in tears when I saw the Saturn V for the very first time. And it was as impressive last year as it was the 1st time I saw it. It’s a piece of history… Can you imagine? It took us to the moon!
Last week, I promised you the real thing, didn’t I? It’s not gonna get more real than this. Or maybe, … Wait, … There is more! ‘Cause KSC is also home to Space Shuttle Atlantis. Check back next week.
I finally have my personal website back online! I tried all sorts of different things over the last 3 years: a static HTML based site, Joombla, … I was looking for something that was easy to maintain, something where I could show my work as a photographer, something where I could share my thoughts and ideas, something that would allow me to share links, articles, music clips and video. So I decided to return to WordPress. And after a hiatus of 3 years I have returned to the blogosphere (does anyone still use that word?).
I have been foolin’ around a lot with web design and development these last few months. Actually: it took a lot of my time. And one of the things I’ve been working on is a website tailored to the display size of Apple’s iPhone.
Designing for a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels can be quite intriguing. How does one create an attractive website that is fast, small in size, easy to use and still holds all the information one would want to on such a small display? As usual, the internet is the best source of information and inspiration. It took some research: I went to some reading material on designing for handhelds and select Highslide to power my portfolio page. Then I went to work…
It took a couple of days to design and code the site. But it is done! I’ve just released my iPhone micro site. And now that it’s done, I actually quite proud of it.
Euh… You’ll need an iPhone or an iPod Touch to view it… Obviously!
I have planned a server migration on Friday, August 7 between 20:00H and 24:00H CET (18:00 to 22:00H UTC). This website and the partner websites will not be available at that time. I will also not be available via e-mail during that period.
I have decided to move my hosting at Combell to a bigger, more flexible hosting service. Hence this server migration.