Urban Walkabouts & Mobile Photography ~ Part Deux: It’s About the Apps
A few more thoughts and creative tips to add to your inspiration on your urban walkabout. As you can tell from the title, and something not fully discussed in the previous post, it really is all about the apps.
The principles of good photography apply. Before I get to talking about some of my favorite apps, let me say that all the good, long standing principles of photography apply on urban walkabouts: Your choice of composition, what you choose to include and exclude from the framing of your images is critical to creating compelling images. Composition includes not only how you frame the image, but also what perspective you choose.
Do you photograph your subject from where you are standing, either top-down or perhaps straight into it? Or do you get low on the ground and shoot up from an “ant’s eye” perspective? Do you walk around an interesting subject and observe it from many angles and perspectives, or do you photograph it as you first encounter it from a standing eye-level point of view and quickly move on, not wanting to look like a crazy artist weirdo to passersby? It can all make a difference in the images you end up with to process later.
The second, and to my mind the single most important principle to good, compelling photography is lighting. After all, it’s called “light writing.” Of the two factors of lighting: quantity and quality, it is quality that is most important. As I said in the previous post, when it comes to urban walkabouts, you pretty much have to take the light you are given. But a truly observant and well-trained eye can see the potential in any lighting situation, even street lighting late at night or in early morning hours. Be a keen observer of light always, and your photography will improve immensely.
It’s All About The Apps… Mostly. Now that the important basics are out of the way, let’s talk about what we came here for. I’m always asked about which mobile photography apps I use and it usually ends there. Far more important than which ones I use, is how I combine different apps, and certain unique qualities of those apps to create images that no one app can achieve. It is this collaborative mixing or “mashing-up” of apps that I find the most interesting aspect of the post-processing experience. One quick caveat regarding apps I’ve experienced over the years is that some apps stop working altogether when the phones and operating systems that power them are upgraded and the app developers stop updating their apps. There is nothing more disheartening than to find your favorite photo app no longer works and the developer has abandoned updating it. I’ve had too many apps follow this process, apps that help create some truly unique images that can never be repeated. Choose your apps wisely and be prepared for obsolescence. Below is my current (2025) lineup of iPhone apps, some of which get more love than others.
This image above called “Studebaker” was photographed at an urban antique car show with my original iPhone 3Gs and an early photo app whose name I forgot. I remember the app had some really cool, unique features no other app had. Unfortunately it was one of the apps abandoned by its developer, so the unique features it had had to be deleted from my phone, leaving just this one, unique image as a legacy to its once creative existence. If there were a landfill of abandoned photo apps, it would rival any real world landfill by now!
Hipstamatic
All that said, one of my earliest photo apps I downloaded when it first came out in December 2009, the year I started my mobile photography journey, Hipstamatic (called “Classic” in the Photo Studio list on my iPhone) has been with me ever since. I’ve often said if I were stuck on a deserted island with an iPhone and only one photo app, Hipstamatic is the one I would choose. Originally it was restricted to only using images it captured (no access to the Camera Roll or using images made from other apps) and only square formatted images at that. As other apps surpassed it with less restrictive features, thankfully the developers kept at its development, and opened up its really unique features to all images created on the iPhone. It’s a really fun app to use, mimicking a vintage 35mm camera 📷 with various different virtual films and lenses that provide endless variety of combinations.
It even lets you choose between some cool looking “camera bodies” and you can swipe different lenses to give you the feel of a faux virtual camera on your mobile phone! If you’re feeling nostalgic for vintage style analog film photography, Hipstamatic gives you the tools to scratch that itch more than any other app.
The “back” of the camera has “switch” in the upper left corner you can click to activate the double exposure feature, and if you click the film icon on the lower left of the front camera body, the camera “opens” to let you swipe up or down on the film canister to change films. You can also swipe left and right on the lens to change that. The center slider under the viewfinder activates the “flash” (you can hear it powering up), and the click wheel directly above the shutter button lets you change the shutter speed. All this clever interface lets you feel like you are setting up your camera to shoot with whatever combo of film/lens you like. There are even switches to go between the wide and telephoto actual lenses on your iPhone (just to the right of the viewfinder), and choose a flash accessory of which there are several for more creativity. All this fun setting up of your camera like its analog equivalent gets you ready to shoot with the app itself.
This double exposure using that switch described above was the result of just playing and being bored while sitting at my favorite café.That you can’t see how exactly the two images will align or the exposures will affect each other is half the fun. The randomness of the process allows you to be surprised at the results. Of course that’s only the beginning. The mix of film types and really unique lenses, plus a host of other tools you can activate by playing around with the app make it a truly unique and powerful tool all by itself.
This image above, part of the “Staccato Feather” series was made from an image in the camera roll that I took into Hipstamatic after processing in another app, but it was in playing with a certain film 🎞️ in Hipstamatic that this image became a true work of art. It’s not a film I would use on too many other images, but in this case, it was perfect.
There really are far too many features in Hipstamatic that it could warrant its own blogpost, and anyway at least half the fun of any app is in the process of exploring all it can do for you. So go download this app, and have fun seeing what it (and you) can do! *Note: A good many (but not all) of the images in this post have passed through Hipstamatic.
Snapseed
Snapseed is one of those truly unique mobile phone apps that has both features that some other apps have, and some no one else have. This combo can make Snapseed your only mobile phone app if you want, your “deserted island” 🏝️ app if you like, but as I’ve said, I often use multiple apps in various combinations to get the images I want.
This image above is a prime example of using Snapseed and its tools exclusively to create the finished image. I always start my process in Snapseed by using the HDR tool first, then often go to the Drama tool to see if that enhances the image, then sometimes either the Vintage or Rotolux tools. In this particular image, I tried the Perspective tool for the first time to play with skewing the perspective. I was blown away by how this particular tool stretched and pulled the pixels and automatically filled in the background to keep the image dimensions. That was truly like watching magic before your eyes! Now Snapseed came out of Google’s purchase of the Nik Collection many years ago, and while Google let the Collection simply stagnate, they took the Nik talent of engineers and some of the best features of the Collection to make Snapseed a powerhouse of an app.
This image, called “Buddha Amongst the Banyans”, was created after stumbling across the elements while on an urban walkabout and deciding to walk down a street I had never been down before, but passed by many times. There’s something to be said about choosing a different path from time to time.
Snapseed with its clean and minimal interface also has a great many tools to edit your image in a number of ways, and the real fun is in how they are combined to give unique looks and effects to your images. I’ve been known to run an image through the HDR tool twice in the same editing session after adding other tools just to see what an added HDR look does to the image. It doesn’t always work in making the image “better”, but sometimes, if you ask the creative question “what if?”, you can create magic!
The Double Exposure tool in Snapseed, unlike the one in Hipstamatic lets you see how it’s going to look, is completely editable, allowing you to rotate, zoom in and out, change opacity and blend modes much like layers in Photoshop. It’s a fun tool to give you a unique image you would otherwise not create without the option. You can see other examples of the technique in my Gallery :: Five :: of 100+ mobile images.
AvgCamPro
AvgCamPro is one unique app that I consider a specialty app. It does one thing and one thing only. It takes a series of overlapping exposures (depending on how many exposures you set it for) that allow you to 9move the camera while the exposures are made to create a type of ICM or In-Camera-Movement effect that is totally unique to this app. It does have the limitation of being a shoot only app, meaning you only get the look it gives you by shooting in the app. It won’t let you use images in your camera roll to create the effect shot with other apps. It’s not an “editing” app in that sense.
But in that sense, it lends itself to creating unique, one-of-a-kind images that can never be repeated. Even if you photograph the same subject twice, the way in which you move and rotate the camera, up, down, sideways, and in circles will never be the same movement twice. This makes each image you create with it a more precious work of art. You can of course take your saved “motion image” into other apps that access the camera roll and enhance them further.
This utilizing of multiple apps, all on the iPhone while you’re having a coffee at your favorite café just after you’ve captured an image, then uploading it to the web takes instant gratification to the ultimate level. You are only limited by your own imagination and creative sensibilities.
Dramatic (B&W)
Dramatic (B&W) is an app for lovers of bold, dramatic black and white images that can only be achieved easily with this app. There are a number of built-in presets, including some infrared styles, and a Spotlight feature which is a glorified vignette tool you can adjust or, like me, turn off all together.
The app lends itself beautifully to landscapes and portraits in particular, and the rather limited toolset lets you tone your B&W and add grain, etc. All in all, it’s a nice app to play with. One note, this is not a shooting app. You can only use its features on images in you camera roll shot from the native camera or from other apps. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some apps like AvgCamPro above are shoot only apps, while others like this one are only for editing existing images.
TinType
TinType is an app by the same developers as Hipstamatic and is another fun app for those nostalgic for a bygone analog photographic process. In that respect, it does one thing only, but does it very well. You can either shoot your tintype image with the built in camera button (you can use either the front facing “selfie” camera or switch to the back camera), as well as choose an image from your camera roll to give a tintype wetplate treatment to.
Even within the relatively limited editing tools (all geared towards the wetplate look) you can get fairly creative. The effect is geared towards portrait work, but it can be used very effectively on other types of images if you have the imagination to create unique images. The “solarization” effect on this self-portrait was created in another mobile application. I explain the technique in my upcoming mobile photography course.
The look of a well made tintype evokes a nostalgic feeling for a bygone, classic era in the history of photography. Again, there is no reason you have to stop at the image one app gives you. Explore taking the unique one-of-a-kind images and bring them into multiple other apps to add those unique features to your images. Mashups are fun and very good for your creative sensibilities.
These are just a few of the apps I regularly use, a more deep dive look into all that are currently in my mobile Photo Studio will be available in my iPhone/Mobile photography course and PDF. It takes a lot of practice and playing around and exploring all that these amazing apps can do, along with the capabilities of mobile photography to capture incredible images. But as I say, the SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) image is just the beginning. Always ask yourself “What if?”, then find out what if you take an image further than you ever expected. Astonish yourself, then share it with the world…