Olloclip field trip

Ōlloclip have released their Lenses for the iPhone 7 (finally). I was able to get their core lens set from the Apple Store on Monday and in a nice coincidence it was also a sunny day. I headed down to Holyrood Park from the centre of Edinburgh to see what I could capture. The Olloclip core lens set comes with three lenses: Fish Eye; Super Wide and Macro (15x). 

 

Holyrood Park (also called the Queen's Park or King's Park depending on the reigning monarch's gender) is a royal park in central Edinburgh, Scotland. It has an array of hills, lochs, glens, ridges, basalt cliffs, and patches of gorse, providing a remarkably wild piece of highland landscape within its 650-acre area. The park is associated with the royal palace of Holyroodhouse and was formerly a 12th-century royal hunting estate. It also has the small hill of Arthur's Seat to climb.

The park is a short walk from the centre of Edinburgh and provides plenty of great photographic opportunities. The shots below were taken mostly with the super wide lens attached to my iPhone with a couple of fish-eye shots thrown in for fun :-)

 

Victoria Street

Victoria Street has been described by many people as the nicest street in Edinburgh. It is very photographable. Inspired as I am again to start taking more photographs, Edinburgh, where I spend a lot of my time, is the obvious place to take some time out and shoot some photographs.

I was recently inspired by Lisa Bettany's post on taking photographs of light trails, especially as some of those were taken in Edinburgh. I had the chance to replicate a couple of the photographs that were in her post. It was good experience as it taught me few things that I had forgot, didn't think about and re-learned....

I forgot: Early evening there are a lot of parked cars. If I went back at 3am there I would be surprised if there were any cars, but then if you want light trails you might also be waiting a long time.

Didn't think about: Bringing my larger tripod. I couldn't get the shot I really wanted due to the small tripod not being able to keep steady in the position I required.

Re-Learned: Gloves are fricking essential in winter. An emergency stop at Starbucks was required so I could get some feeling in my fingers.

I also took an image on my iPhone (7+) which is on my Instagram page, I was pleasantly surprised at how good the image is from the iPhone at night. Click or tap on the images below to view the large image!

Snapseed update

Snapseed recently updated to version 2.7 on the iPhone. It is generally my 'go to' application for quickly adding some pop to photographs on the iPhone. It has a nice clean minimalist interface thats intuitive and can easily share photographs to other applications on the phone (think Instagram). The update came with a really nice new feature though, it has added a section called "Insights".

The insights feature provides short tutorials on how to add different effects using the application. It also has photographer interviews, which are really good for finding out about how they got into the business. The insights feature is a nice addition if you need some inspiration.

The photograph I have added shows the "Detailed Black and White" insight, added onto a photograph I recently took of Edinburgh Castle. It's a bit more 'effect' than I would apply, depending on my mood of course.