iPhoneography Insights: No Focus

When I came upon this puddle there wasn’t anything too special about it. But the sun had just set, and I liked the colors in the sky.

In this post I’ll show you how I used Mextures to take the colors up a notch and create a surreal result.

I took a few photos and didn’t review them on the spot since I was in a rush. Out of all the photos taken, I actually liked this one even though it’s out of focus. That’s where I got the title after all. 😉

I applied the “Dusk” gradient to both the top and bottom of the image. Notice the different orientations in the screenshot on the right.

Before

After

After exporting from Mextures, I reduced the noise using the “Smooth” feature in Pixlr. Too much smoothing can ruin an image, but, since this one is out of focus, it worked out really well. Lastly, I finished it off with a preset from VSCO Cam that really brought out the purple.

Check out more iPhoneography Insights here.

And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram!

iPhoneography Insights: Wispy

As you can tell from the title, the wispiness of the clouds definitely made this photo a great capture. But I wanted to take this opportunity to have a little more fun with it and give you a brief demonstration of how I use one of my favorite apps — Mextures.

According to the app’s description, Mextures is the best app for applying film grain, textures, light leaks, and beautiful gradients to your images in seconds.

I waited for the sun to reach the horizon.

As you’ll see in the screenshot below,  the first gradient I used amplifies the warmth of the sky. The second gradient was used to add more color to it.

One of the awesome features of the app is that it allows you to perform non-destructive edits, i.e., you can go back and change how strong/soft you want the gradient to be.

After editing the photo in Mextures, I put the finishing touches using a filter in VSCO Cam.

Before

View the apps in iTunes:

• Mextures
• VSCO Cam

Check out more iPhoneography Insights here.

And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Minimalist

This is my favorite challenge theme thus far. 😉