Warning: this post is part proud puppy papa wanting to show everyone pictures of his new baby girl, and part iphoneography geek sharing. – Todd

Over the last couple years, like thousands of people, both Diane and I have grown to love photographing with our iphones. But between the two of us, she is the one who has really delved into it. I’ve kinda tinkered.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved hunting down useful apps for us to play with. Shooting moments and scenes of our travels. And capturing cool street art we’ll stumble upon in our wanderings.

I love how our smart phones whittle photography down to its pure essentials, lighting, composition, timing, and heart; almost forcing the photographer to release themselves from all the other technical mumbo-jumbo. I’m amazed and inspired by the creativity and talent that finds its way to instagram and other sharing platforms.

But for me, I haven’t had a consistent muse to keep me shooting with my phone on a daily basis. Our travels happen sporadically. I don’t find much of our daily life thrilling enough to warrant a “look at this!” social share. Until now.

Puppies are just so damn cute there is a constant stream of moments we want to share all the time. Plus we have East Coast friends that if demanded daily photos when we get a puppy.

So now that I have been shooting regularly everyday, I’ve also been spending more time iphone editing. A while back Broderick of Savory Exposure had tweeted out that one of his favorite apps (Snapseed) was on sale, so I immediately snatched it up, but then it sat gently used in my phone for the longest time.

Diane on the other hand quickly fell in love with it and it has become one of her most used apps. So now that I’m shooting more, I decided to give Snapseed at bit more attention and I have to say, “I love it!”

It’s now the first spot I run my photos through. The adjustments are quick to cycle through and apply. You can make specific adjustments with the color, sharpness, focus, etc., or there are the preset groups that will give you a quick stylistic look but still allowing you to make adjustments to the preset.

Here’s my usual editing workflow. Open up the photo in Snapseed, use the Tilt-Shift or Center Focus to direct the eye to somewhere in the frame. Sometimes even running it through both of them. After that I’ll either make a specific adjustment, maybe desaturate a bit or sharpen or contrast, or I’ll just open up and cycle through the vintage presets and tweak them a bit.

Above: Tilt-Shift and its options – Below: One of the Vintage Presets and its options.

And that’s about it. Sometimes I may take it into another app which I like some of the preset looks or else occasionally use one of the Instagram presets, but usually Snapseed gets me what I want, unless it is a Black & White look I want, then I have another favorite app for that, but we’ll save that for another time.

And if you need to get your puppy fix on, there will be a regular stream of puppy pics landing on my Instagram feed. 😉 I’m sure Diane will have more than a few as well.

-Todd

I’d love to hear about what your muse is, or you know I’m an app geek, give me your favorite app recommendations.  Thanks for putting up with a puppy papa and his pics!

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