May Instagram


This month has seemed to be never ending. I keep thinking that we are on the last day of the month, but then there is one more day. It was the 29th, then the 30th, and now the 31st!

Despite the fact that the month has seemed long, I wasn't too great at instagraming this month. I think approximately halfway through the month I bought the 60d, and the concept of taking photos with my cell phone was put on the back burner. I just found that I could get better color and more depth of field shots with the camera. Nevertheless it is fun to take pictures with my cell phone when I find myself in a pinch with awesome light. Hopefully next month I'll be more on top of it.

As a heads up, I'm currently working with Justin to photograph some sort of food making tutorial. Unfortunately the combination of a really dark house and a husband that moves pretty fast in the kitchen has made it quite a bit more difficult than originally anticipated. So what do you think? Would you be interested in seeing some recipes on here?

April 2013 Instagram


I hate to say it, but I am pretty happy April is almost over. I've loved seeing the beautiful flowers blooming and enjoying the nice weather, but the month has been very long indeed. Luckily, I have a few pretty instagrams to show for it!

Iphoneography & Five Awesome Camera Apps

So after doing such fun posts yesterday, I had no idea what to post today... except that I am IN LOVE with a picture I took and edited on my phone (BluxPhoto, Instagram, and Picstitch). Apparently this month I am obsessed with images. 

With this shot, I just had to keep repositioning myself in front of these roses, so that neither artwork nor doors nor kids were in the shot. I didn't think it was working... I didn't think I was getting the flowers saturated enough... and then I threw it into instagram and I think "Ok... This is working..." THEN I throw the image into picstitch thinking I'm going to create a combined image along the theme of "Roses are red, violets are blue..." (Why not purple? ... I had a picture of purple flowers as seen below that I was going to use in a 3 picture template.) but as I went to do that, this magic thing happened with the roses. I can't even explain it. (Filters in Picstitch.) All of a sudden my image was crazy saturated red... and white (or grey)... and... perfect in a completely imperfect I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter way. 


As mentioned above... I also shot and crazy saturated some purple flowers...


But then the rain came and I had to go inside. Instead of giving up for the day, after I left work, as I sat in my car waiting for the rain to stop, I saw flowers and ivy through my raindrop covered window which I had to shoot. Other than being dreamy and out of focus, this shot makes me happy. Rain should always make the world dreamy and out of focus. And yellow. (But yellow equates to happiness, right?)


So anyway, I thought I would take a moment to share my five favorite Iphone Camera apps.

1. BluxPhoto - This is currently one of my favorite apps for capturing images. There are SOOO many options for capturing photos that I can't even begin to tell you all of them. I usually shoot on auto or macro mode. I do love using the Delhi filter since it often seems more saturated than auto really allows. There are options to shoot with the camera facing out... or in... And my true love, behind having a focusing point that you touch when you are ready to take a photo, is that you can see a histogram of your image as you are shooting. Being a crazy Photoshop person and having studied histograms more than I care to mention, it is an awesome way to make sure you are getting the brightness/darkness you want as well as keeping your color in check. Like I said, there are so many options within Blux that I have no idea about, but I can say that, even with my limited Blux knowledge, it makes it hard to ever think about going back to the regular iphone camera.

2. ProHDR - As the next one on my list, this is my next go-to camera app. Don't even get me started about how much I dislike iphone HDR. ProHDR doesn't always get the image right, but more times than not I find it obtains two pictures with the right amount of light in each. (Obviously one image is dark and one is light.) I have taken so many images with this app that I love, I'd have a hard time not recommending it.

3. DMD - If you need to capture panoramas, this is the best app I've found for that. Basically you hold your phone vertically and press the "start" button making sure the blue and white half circles meet as you work your way around the scene. When you are done, you press the "finish" button. Originally these pictures would save in your photos folder, but now you have to make a point of saving them to your photo folder. Yuck. (Please fix this DMD.) I've definitely gotten some fun panoramas with DMD. Just make sure to hold your phone as steady as possible when turning it otherwise you may end up with a few "bumps" and "hiccups" in your photos. 

4. Instagram - Please tell me you know about Instagram! :) Okay, so if you don't... Instagram is a fast photo editing program that uses filters to make your photos look... more saturated, old, less saturated, black and white, sepia toned, etc... It's not amazing on it's own, but it is fun when you don't have photoshop on your phone! Plus it's a quick and easy way to share photos with friends and family. You can easily post your pictures on twitter, facebook or e-mail them. 

5. PicStitch - Less a photo taking or editing app, Picstitch allows you to edit photo templates making it easy to fit multiple photos into a small square or rectangle for using in instagram, showing before/after, or even posting multiple images all at once rather than posting one image at a time (great for an event). It's fun, and it's free. What more could you ask for?

The Honorable Mention goes to Nightcap. If you have issues taking images in low light settings with your iphone, this may be the app for you. Because it uses longer exposure times, you need to hold the camera as still as you possibly can. The nice thing about this app is that it shows you the shutter speed and ISO. Unfortunately, this app confuses me. I never know if my image was taken or when I can move my phone again. Ack! The app seems to get stuck after taking a picture. As soon as you move the phone, it comes back to life, but, like I said, that doesn't really help me in determining if my shot was taken. (Nightcap, help?!)

So there you go... Five awesome iphone apps for shooting beautiful images, editing, and sharing with your friends. (You know you want to!)

** I have not been compensated for my opinions. My opinions are my own, and I love using these apps.
*** If you steal my photos, I will find you and murder you. I promise. However, if you want to repost my photos giving credit to me, you are free to do so.

February 2013 Instagram

I can hardly believe that it is the last day of February 2013!



This has been quite a month! A super busy one at that!

We spent the month:
- spending time at Intermezzo with one of Justin's friends, Omar, who visited with us during his trip from CA
- spending time with Justin's friends from Slovakia and having our first dinner party
- babysitting a 3-yr-old during Valentine's Day week
- the heat going out in our house
- the transmission in my car acting up... to my car not starting... to it being completely fine (??)
- the president visiting our "small" town
- my computer hard drive (and back up) hating on me
- making cupcakes that failed... then making an amazing cake
- meeting up with our high school German teacher
- ending the month with Photoshop Week with CreativeLive (which has been amazing and SUPER HELPFUL!)

So what did you do this month? Were you as crazy busy as me? :)

Instagram Treasures

It's Friday! We made it through the week! Go us!


I'm thinking about putting some of my instagram images on wood like you can do with Instathis. What do you all think? Sounds like a fun way to decorate the house, right?

However, I can't afford Instathis, so I will probably be getting the images printed and glue them to the wood. My dad even recommended putting some sort of gloss over the images. Possible future DIY project?!

By the way, you never know what kind of images you can get when you are playing around with your phone, standing on a stool, and adjusting your object so it gets hit with just the right amount of morning light! :)

I hope you all are having a fantastic Friday!

January 2013 Instagram


I can hardly believe this month is almost over! It seems like it has gone by soooo very fast! When I was going through my Instagram pictures, I realized that I have been really slacking this month in picture-taking and Instagram-editing! I almost think I like the look of the 9 images over the 16 though, so I may continue to only do 9 images a month. I think that is a completely reasonable number. (Plus, it doesn't fill up my phone as fast!!)

I've also been having a lot of fun with the Blux camera app. If you check out the Hershey's Kiss image and the strawberry image, I was using Blux to capture those. I love that it will allow you to focus on one particular point blurring out the rest of the image. It definitely makes the images more interesting.

That is my prop for Blux! Go check it out!

*I am not affiliated with Blux or Instagram, and I am not being paid or compensated for my opinion. My opinion is my own.