Photo Gallery: A Photographer's Guide to iPhone Photo Apps

Neptune's Fountain, Poland

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

Hipstamatic

Lens: Libatique 73

Film: Ina’s 1969

Flash: Off

The Hipstamatic app transforms your iPhone into a small toy camera, and it has really become one of my favorite creative tools. It's probably the best app to use to mimic the retro look that emulates the plastic lenses and saturated colors we see from the Holga and Lomo film cameras. What makes this app especially fun to use is the variety of camera components—film, lenses, and flash settings—that you can experiment with. When you get ready to take the photo, be sure to take your time and find the place where your subject separates from the background. Here, I'm careful to place the dark Neptune statue against the light sky in order to ensure that the central figure stands out from the background, something to always keep in the back of your mind when taking pictures.

I have been returning year after year to Neptune’s Fountain in Gdanzk, Poland, and I finally feel I’ve made a photo that captures a sense of the past, like a photo I could have found in an old family album. Selecting, as I’ve done here, from among the app’s borders can also add to a photo’s retro feel. The app also includes some unexpected features: Shake the camera before you take a shot, for instance, and the settings will be fixed randomly, giving you a different look every time. —Cotton Coulson

Hearts, Poland

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

Hipstamatic

Lens: Watts

Film: Big Up

Flash: Off

Here’s another Hipstamatic photo, this time taken with different settings, that demonstrates how the app can create vibrant colors and provide a creative way to shoot patterns and close-ups. Right next to St. Mary’s Church in Gdansk, Poland, I found posted on a wire fence these romantic hearts dedicated to lovers. Using the camera settings above, I selected virtual masking tape as a border for the photo, giving it texture, color, and framing around the edges. Move in close and use this app when you want to experiment with different colors and textures. I prefer finding a still life arrangement that has well-defined shapes and patterns, like you see here with the heart motif. You can shoot very close-in with this app, which provides a fresh way of seeing details, and a different perspective.

The Watts lens and Big Up film that I used to create this photo came in a HipstaPak—lens and film combinations that create a particular look—called Bondi. In this case, the HipstaPak featured colorful saturation along with some funky frames. It's a good idea to keep a lookout for these "limited edition" HipstaPaks, some of which are free. For those that aren’t, the proceeds are often contributed to a good cause.

If you enjoy shooting with Hipstamatic, you can also try out another popular app called Instagram, which pays homage to the old Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras. It comes with a complete set of filters that you can work with to process your photos, and it quickly allows you to share images with the Instagram community. It differs from Hipstamatic primarily in that you only use this app to work with photos that are already stored on your iPhone. —Cotton Coulson

Billboard Poster, Poland

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

Pic Grunger

This app provides a great way to add layers of texture over your photos to make them look streaked and faded with age. It comes with an extensive library of effects, including Scratched, Scuffed, Sponged, and Streaked. The app also comes with custom settings to tweak styles, strengths, and borders. And you can use your hi-res photo files, then save them back into your iPhone camera roll.

When I’m out traveling and taking photos, in the back of my mind I’m always thinking about contrast in subject matter as a visual theme. Sometimes it's contrast in colors, shapes, and light, and sometimes it's contrast between old and new. This often adds drama to a photo. While in Gdansk, Poland, I came across an old building with a contemporary billboard poster behind it. After taking the straightforward photo with the iPhone, I processed it using Pic Grunger to give it an old-fashioned feel. Remember, you can also process your photos using multiple apps, giving your image a layered look. —Cotton Coulson

Fall Leaves, Cape Cod

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

TiltShift Generator

Very often I feel like creating a dreamy effect, and I find this app does a great job of controlling blur, depth, and color. There’s a whole genre of contemporary photography in which real scenes are made to look miniature. You can achieve this look using a tilt-shift lens—or a Lensbaby on a DSLR camera—but this app makes it simple to create the same effect using your iPhone. I like the elegance and design of the controls. You can adjust the amount of blur, contrast, brightness, and vignetting to your liking. I often use an app like this to photograph landscapes, especially when I want to control the focus in the foreground and background.

During a recent visit to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I used this app to photograph the fall leaves in the wetlands. When trying to create this look, you can achieve better results by taking a bird’s-eye view and shooting down on your subject and scene. For this photo, I walked up to a wooden deck to shoot down over the trees. —Cotton Coulson

Art Deco Detail, Latvia

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

SynthCam

I first read about the technology for this app while traveling in the Baltic region in the fall of 2011. It’s the one app I found that comes closest to shooting with a high-end, narrow-depth-of-field lens, blurring the background and making your subject stand out. The creator of the app is Marc Leroy, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University, and it works by using your iPhone's video function to capture multiple frames and merge the combined images to create a still photo with a shallow depth of field.

When shooting with this app, move your iPhone in circular motions, starting with small circles and keeping the iPhone on the same plane as the subject. In normal photo mode the camera will only capture low-res images, but you can change that by switching to HDR (high dynamic range). When using this app, you want to have a subject that stands out. It takes some practice, but the look of your photos will be unique. This app allows you to really focus on one spot and emphasize what you find most interesting in the frame, as I did with this architectural detail seen on an art deco building in Riga. —Cotton Coulson

Portrait, Scandinavia

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

Plastic Bullet

This iPhone app comes from a company called Red Giant (I love all of their products), which also makes the grading software that Hollywood film editors use on feature films. I normally stay away from apps that feature multicolored filter kits—it’s just not my look. I much prefer the subtle organic colors, vignettes, and blurs that this app produces. It’s very simple to use and allows you to select a range of preloaded, graded presets. As you can see, it also works well for black-and-white images. I like the border trim that this graded look has, such as the rough black border seen here. As with many of the popular iPhone apps, with Plastic Bullet you can choose to edit a photo already in your camera roll or to use the app itself to take the photo. Remember to get in close and look for strong eye contact when you take portraits, positioning your subject in the light and where he or she feels comfortable. Also, make sure the background is far enough away to provide separation and a sense of depth.

Pictured here is a woman I met at the Kobba Klintar Lighthouse in the Åland Islands in the middle of the Baltic Sea. I love the way the app randomly softens sections of the frame (such as the lower left corner here) and makes them appear as though they were exposed to light leaks in the camera. —Cotton Coulson

Mexican Restaurant, California

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

SuperPopCam

This app was created by Japanese interactive designer Takayuki Fukatsu. It’s simple to use: Just swipe through the different effects to see the results before you shoot. Some of the effects have creative names like Violet Fizz, Lemonade, and Cherry Pie. This app is just the right tool to have when you’re trying to photograph food, since it comes with built-in vivid colors—just what you want. In this Mexican restaurant in Mill Valley, California, I responded to the bright colors on the tablecloth and taco chips in the basket. While on assignment, I’ve often noticed a direct correlation between color and culture, which I try to capture in my photos. —Cotton Coulson

Still Life, Scandinavia

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

CameraBag

When I started shooting photos with my iPhone, this was the first app I liked using because it re-created the different types of film emulsions that I shot with during the days of film. During those days at National Geographic magazine, we always shot with a selection of Kodachrome film emulsions, beginning with Kodachrome II and following with 25, 64, and finally 200. I found the Magazine setting on the app to be a very close proxy to the look we used to get with film. Other settings I like to use include Instant, which mimics a Polaroid SX-70, and 1974, which reminds me again of Kodachrome II. This iPhone app is ideal for going after subtle and subdued colors. The built-in presets have done all the work for you.

Here, on the small island of Kobba Klintar, Åland Islands, a bunch of cream-colored tulips contrasts with a black-and-white photo of sailors on board the windjammer Pommern, one of the Flying P-Liners. —Cotton Coulson

Tivoli Gardens, Denmark

Photograph by Cotton Coulson

Adobe Photoshop Express

If I just want to take a photo that’s not processed by an iPhone app, I’ll use Adobe Photoshop Express because, unlike the Apple camera app, it allows me to shoot several shots in a sequence without any delay (which is especially handy when shooting action). If you decide to buy the extra Adobe Camera Pack, you get additional features, like the ability to eliminate the digital noise that occurs in low light situations. When I took this picture in Tivoli Gardens, Denmark, just as the daylight was turning to blue, the photograph had a fair amount of noise. Using the noise-reduction feature made it possible to remove noise from the photo. The Adobe Camera Pack also comes with a photo review feature, handy to have as you review your shots before saving them, as well as a self-timer, so you can jump into the photo and be part of the moment. —Cotton Coulson