I rarely ever take photos with an actual camera any more.
It's sad.
I have a nice (although old) DSLR sitting in my closet that only gets pulled out for special occasions like vacations or family functions. And by family functions I mean my sister saying "bring your camera when you come visit and take some pictures of my kids". I had to have my brother remind me how to use it when we went to CA last fall. I couldn't remember how to do simple things like change aperture in manual mode. Gracious!
My go-to camera has become my iPhone. Truth be told, 95% of the reason I wanted an iPhone and coveted it for years was for the camera. It did not disappoint. The minute I turned that baby on, it became a constant photo snapping machine. Right at this moment, I have 3,393 photos in my camera roll. It's a bit ridiculous.
The main things I love about my iPhone camera is that I can take the photo, edit it with my favorite photo editing app, upload and share it all within a few minutes. Done and done. And the results are so amazing to me. Such a beautiful photo from a tiny camera on the back of my phone.
Here are my 3 super simple essentials/favorites for iPhone photography:
1. VSCOcam. I think it is, hands down, the best photo editing app out there. The filters are understated (in the best way) and light. It turns a good photo into a magical one. Easy to use. Fun. It can be customized to your specifications and needs. Pushes my photography to new places. I can't say enough how much I love this app. I have tried a lot of others and many of them are good, but this one is the one that I always go back to. No fuss. No silly things I never use like light leaks or film grains. Just simple filters that make my photos look like they do in my head when I hit the shutter.
Cost: Free (with in app purchases available) I purchased the Launch bundle when it was on debut sale a year ago. If you aren't interested in spending $6, I personally love the F: Mellow/Fade collection, the K: Analog Classic collection and the Legacy Collection (which has been offered through VSCOcam since the very beginning). These are my go-to filters for those of you that follow my photos on Instagram. Ninety-seven percent of my Hawaii photos were done with K and F.
2. Square Ready. It's my favorite way to send my rectangle photos to Instagram with that white border on the top and bottom. I like how easy it is and how it uploads directly to Instagram. Cost: Free
3. Instagram. It's my favorite, most addictive social networking site. I really don't like Facebook. Twitter is fun for following others. But Instagram is my addiction. I'm a photo girl and always have been. This is how I share tidbits of my life, through pictures.
Not to mention that once you upload to Instagram, you can now access dozens of great apps and sites that will print out those photos and turn them into fun things like magnets or prints or books or postcards (all of which I have done through the companies in the links).
Honorable mention: Flickr. I've had a Flickr pro-account for years, but have only recently begun to use it for my back-up photo storage. The latest app update has auto-upload which means that all my newest photos will automatically upload to my Flickr account if I just open the app. It's like a mental sigh of relief. If I lose my phone, I won't lose all my photos. Cost: $24/year for a pro-account. However, free accounts now have 1T of storage! Definitely worth it if you need another place to back up all those memories.
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