Thursday, October 27, 2011

The iPhoneography of Robert Yaskovic

(Some time ago I asked Robert Yaskovic if he'd mind sharing a few of his iPhoneography secrets and he sent along today's post which is full of great ideas and app suggestions for your iPhone.) 

I am a professional photographer and an amateur fly fisherman. My fishing work can be seen on the Tumblr site The Fly Shutter and my professional work can be seen at Yaskovic Wedding + Protrait.

I am going to give away all my secrets for awesome fly fishing iPhoneography.  I have an Apple iPhone 3Gs and hopefully soon an iPhone 4S.  I have more photo applications (apps) on my phone than anything else.  My favorites are Hipstamatic, Camera+, Diptic, Lo-Mob and Infinicam.  I am also a huge fan of Instagram where there is a growing fly fishing community.


As photographer and principal at Yaskovic Wedding + Portrait, I document weddings as well as commercial, corporate, and editorial work.  My Nikon is an extension of my hands and eyes however I rarely bring it fishing.  Something about thousands of dollars of equipment ending up in the water makes me uncomfortable. That being said, my phone is always on me and it does have a camera.  Basically the camera on my iPhone is pretty crappy.  The different apps I use help make the photos standout.

There are still basic elements to a great photo such as good light, composition, subject and so on that you need to start off with.

Lets get back to the apps!  I love Hipstamatic for it’s different looks.  You can change “film” and “lenses” all day and even add colored “flash” and so you will never have the same look twice.  It’s funny because you are basically making digital photos look like film, but who wants to get film developed when you can have instant gratification?







My new favorite app is Camera+.  I learned about it from skateboarding legend Jamie Thomas and Instagram.  The process is simple...


Open photo in Camera+.  Use Clarity, then HDR (be sure to adjust with slider so it doesn’t look TOO crazy), then maybe add a vignette.




Viola! Clarity is adjusting the mid tones in your photo and looks great on fish, flies, and some scenery but almost never on portraits.  It brings out all the imperfections of the skin, unless you are looking for that.  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and it is basically a filter that cheats for you.  Real HDR photos make multiple, usually two or three, exposures and puts them together to give you a photo that has all the highlights and shadows perfectly exposed for.  Sometimes it’s fun but often times it's just too much.

This is where my other current iPhone obsession comes in...Instagram (IG).  If you have an iPhone, join, it’s free and the fly fishing community is blowing up.  I have Instagram friends in Europe and Japan and in-between. Some run their digital SLR photos through Instagram, and that’s cool, but I’m a purist...iPhone only!




Here are some more photos with the Camera+ routine.












I am a fan of the Diptic app as well. (Diptic is a fancy way of saying two photos side by side. A triptych is three photos. You get the idea). This app allows you to create diptics, triptychs, and so on in your phone and output them to full resolution, so they could be printed. It’s a great app. Here are some creations.








Some of these apps are cheap, some are not.  Camera+ for $1.99 is a steal and Instagram is free.  With these two you are well on your way to awesome iPhoneography.

Some of my other faves are below with samples. When you ask for some fly tying material for Christmas and your birthday, ask for an iTunes gift card as well and head to the App store! I am not paid by Apple to say any of this but I wouldn’t mind it if they did.

Lo-Mob



Infinicam



TiltShift Generator


Camera+




Robert...thanks for your time in this post.  As a fellow iPhone user I find information like this to be quite fascinating and it's neat to get inside your process.

Who would have ever thought that our cellphones would be capable of taking and sharing such stunning images?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

What a great article! As someone just beginning to explore the world of flyfishing photography and iPhoneography specifically, it's like you wrote this just for me. Great photos, too.

e.m.b. said...

Awesome! And I think I need a new cell phone. ;)

Unknown said...

What a great post. I have been using Hipstamatic, but hadn't really looked at other iPhonography programs. I downloaded Camera+ and started converting some of my favorite fish pics.

Here's the result.

http://www.troutsandstouts.com/1/post/2011/10/applied-iphoneography.html

Robert, thanks for the great advice. Cameron, thanks for getting Robert write the post.

Cameron Mortenson said...

VP...glad it was a help.

e.m.b....did you get an iPhone yet?

T&S...Camera+ is a very cool app. I've been playing around with it since this post. The HDR filter is really neat.

e.m.b. said...

No...mine still (sadly) works...justification issues. ;-)