Deserted Beach - A Mini Series shot on iPhone 4s
Hello everyone,
I am in Toronto, Ontario this week. Brought the whole family out here, and my Dad came from Germany as well. It's been a while since I've visited this city, almost 10 years.
We're here to have a look around, discover, explore and if everything goes as expected, there may be some big announcements coming soon!
My workshop company, Vancouver Photo Workshops is working on expanding and it would be a dream come true to operate bi-coastal. Toronto sure has a lot to offer.
While taking advantage of the nice weather yesterday, we took a stroll around the waterfront. The boardwalk lead us to a nice beach setting, and I couldn't resist taking some images. I had brought along my Fuji X100, but the cold weather made the battery go extinct within a matter of minutes.
Well, I still have my phone, don't I?
The images below aren't long exposures, they are all shot on my iPhone 4s. They do share a lot of qualities I aim to include in my actual long exposure work, though.
Photographed in a matter of minutes (the family wasn't going to wait much longer) I call this mini-series: 'Deserted Beach'.
This would be an amazing spot to return with my 'big' camera and do some more actual long exposure work.
Take a look at what I came up with:
I hope you can agree why I fell in love with this setting.
The sun was about to set, the lake was calm, and the area was almost completely empty. A few people were roaming around with their dogs, but I didn't have to wait long for my compositions not to include any 'moving subjects'. I am sure that this is the only season where this area is as empty and 'deserted' as we found it yesterday.
The clouds did a great job filtering the late afternoon sun. Contrast was low, simply perfect conditions to photograph with just about any camera.
The iPhone sure is capable of some amazing results, but keep in mind that these were the ideal conditions. BTW, within less than 10 minutes, my battery went from 70 percent to empty. Yes, it was cold indeed.
As simple as photographing was using the iPhone, I knew I wanted to work on the images. Doing Photoshop to your iPhone images? Yes, I think it does make sense, depending on what final look and feel you're after.
In this case, my adjustments were rather simple, and all Photoshop work took less than 10 minutes to complete (per image). A worthwhile investment as far as I'm concerned.
I loved the color in the original images, but wanted to desaturate and fade them a bit. I also added a soft vignette, to keep the viewer's eye more focused to the center of my frame.
I used Exposure 3 plugin by Alienskin. In addition to SilverEfex made by Nik Multimedia, thess guys really do some great stuff. If you haven't tried it, go and download a fully functional trial version.
I especially like their 'color film' filters, I used a vintage 'Agfacolor' filter for the images above.
In the end, the images above represent very well how I was feeling while taking them.
Let me know what you think. As always, feedback is much appreciated!
Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 08:13AM
Reader Comments (2)
Great shots, indeed. Was happy to hear someone else was out freezing fingers in the cold. Have to love photography to do long exposures in this season ...
MJ
Marc...
These are great images and I agree that this would be a very cool spot to get some amazing long exposure images.
I too discovered very recently how useful my iPhone could be as a handy backup camera for the type of images I try to capture, especially with the assortment of great apps out there to use to complement and/or enhance the image. It's amazing how far technology has gone and amazed at where it'll take us.
I've been using my iPhone 4 to document scenics in B+W of Lawrence, MA (an old New England mill city) near where I live which I've been posting regularly on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/16048420@N05/sets/72157629060682009/). I use for this series Jag.gr 6x6 app to compose the scene in square format in B+W and then import them into Adobe LR3 and Nik's Silver Efex Pro 2 to touch it up. I definitely agree that the Nik suite of products are amazing. I'm very happy and amazed with the output I've been getting so far through this workflow.
Hoping you get some nice long exposure images of the place you're in.
Marty