Mobile Photography

With the advent of wearable technology, it was inevitable the devices would soon start to integrate into mobile photographers' workflow. And thanks to Google's latest update, its Camera app looks to be the first to the punch.

The tech world is full of 'wars,' all of them over the attention of that flighty creature known as 'the consumer.' And one of the wars being raged most furfuriously is between the major social networks: the established behemoths Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; that stubborn network loved by photogs, Google+; and the new kid on the block that has everybody’s undergarments in a bunch: Snapchat.

"A new breed of photo editing app, including Pixtr (pictured), is gaining popularity as people seek to digitally doctor their selfies so that they can look better online.

While photo retouching technology has long been available in expensive computer packages and used in fashion magazines, the rise of free photo editing apps has enabled more people to make their selfies picture perfect."

Some days you are applying yourself to a specific project and everything you come up with looks invariably wrong. It’s not that your image will look bad per se, but the feeling is things are just not what you are after, and you cannot understand when and how you took a wrong turn.

I started with the Moon itself in Alien Sky. Then I moved on to build the various components, through Deco Sketch, Laminar, Glaze, Geló, Over, Handy Photo, assembling everything in Image Blender. Finally, I went through Mextures for softening the overall image feel and Vsco Cam for final color toning.

Everyone enjoys taking pictures, as taking a photo is how many choose to capture a moment or memory in digital form. The iPhone — and, by extension, iOS as a platform — has quickly become one of the most popular ways to take these photos. Apple has included industry-leading optics in their devices since the iPhone 4. More importantly, Apple has focused on the software side of their solution, making a solution where tech specs take a back seat to the processing techniques in iOS. Let’s take a look back at the year through the lens (pun intended) of photography.

"Collages are a great way to showcase a small group of photos that tell a story in a unique way. Instead of relying on a single iconic image or an album stuffed with similar photos to symbolize a complex thought or event, try a handful of images in a unique arrangement to deliver the big picture.

These nine apps constitute a small percentage of what’s available for the iOS platform, but they represent the best or at least unique examples of the genre and can serve as a starting point for your own explorations."

Great app, costs a few pence here and there but great fun. What you get is a retro styled camera with a variety of lens options and frames/borders that add that real vintage feel to your pics. Hipstamatic was way further ahead of facebook and instagram with the whole ‘filter’ thang. The quality of the pics is sooo much better that those on instagram, being sharper, higher clarity. In addition you can organise prints and order real analogue prints via there store. There are a few extra bells and whistles now, but the base unit is the same. The sharing options are pretty awesome too, linking nicely to instagram / tumblr / flickr etc.

Leave the default camera on your iPhone alone and get your head around this powerful camera and video app. Seriously impressed with this bit of kit, it features: Auto white balance (and lock), focus lock, anti-shake, timer, filters, exposure control (by simply scrubbing over area you want to expose for), burst mode, tags (great for like me when you are part taking photos for one of your blogs at a later date), geotags, big button mode (turning your screen into a button – great for covert street photography) and great sharing tools.

Slice, dice and mix match those pics into multi-montage diptychs and beyond. Its a great tool for creating photo-stories and when you don’t want to flood your feed with 4 – 6 images of a similar thing.

Without a doubt, over the last couple of years this has been the app that people have asked me the most about.