Sky Over the Campus or Experimenting with Snapseed

Northy @northy gave me the get pushed challenge to "randomly choose some settings on your camera and find a way to use them to create art :)" My camera is dead so I asked if I could experiment with the camera on my cell phone, since the iPod camera has virtually no settings you can adjust (besides zoom and metering on the spot on the screen where you put your finger). Northy replied "Or you could experiment w iPhone camera / photography apps :)"

I realized that I have Snapseed on the iPod but have almost never used it. So I took a picture on campus earlier this week as I walked to my building. The sky was dramatic and I wanted that, but there was also a red bush and wanted that bit of color. When I tried to get it to meter on the bushes, it just blew out the sky. If I metered on the sky, the rest was really dark. There seemed to be no way to get it in between.

I took the picture with the landscape so dark I could have gone for silhouette instead. Then I experimented with it in Snapseed. The upper left is the original. Upper right is what I got when I used "selective adust" to try to brighten the lower left of the picture some. I saved it but it was still pretty dark. The lower left was when I took it back in and did more "selective adjust" brightening on that corner. Obviously I overdid it. The lower right was a second attempt on adjusting the upper right version. That time I increased the saturation some and the brightness overall a bit. It's not perfect by any means. I've lost some of the contrast in the sky and the selective brightening still is a bit clumsily done. But it's much better than the original in terms of what I wanted.

[Mary Siegle]

@northy I experimented with snapseed on the iPod. Here are some process and results.

[☠northy]

that subtle red is quite lovely! great work with snapseed... i quite like that app for editing on my iPhone... it gives you a fair bit of control without doing it all for you...

[April]

Hi! I am your get-pushed partner for the coming week. I see you are now using an iPod or phone camera. That must be a bit of a learning curve! Because of that, you may have to approach your challenge in stages. First I thought you might concentrate on getting some clearer images. If you don't mind a bit of reading, here are some tips: http://www.grumblesandgrunts.com/2013/01/how-to-best-iphone-camera-tips-tricks.html
Tutorials: http://www.idownloadblog.com/iphone-photography/
and an app I see recommended repeatedly for iPod and iPhone photos: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/camera+/id329670577?mt=8
I am not sure about that, though, as I don't know your operating system. Hopefully these might help you get used to your new camera and enhance its capabilities a bit. I do see some of your recent photos have great light and focus, but this is inconsistent since your forced transition.

Now, for the second part of your challenge, I would like you to try the compositional technique of framing. This was a technique challenge a while ago, which you can find here: http://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/23251/technique-challenge-29-framing

So, first is a bit of homework I hope you will find helpful, and second is an image using framing. Sound good? If not, let me know and I will set another challenge.

[Mary Siegle]

@aecasey Thanks. The iOS on my 4th generation iPod is 6.1.6 so sadly I cannot download the camera+ app. But I will work on the assignment -- I read quickly through the tips article and will go back to it again and also the tutorial. Clearer images and framing. Good challenge OK -- stay tuned -- I'll see what I can do. Now I'm off to look through your project and come up with a challenge for you.