- Hi, I'm Landon.
I'm a Creative at Apple Grand Central in New York City.
And this is Creative Projects.
Today, we're going to be shooting and editing
otherworldly photos in night mode using iPhone.
We're going to go on a little nighttime photo adventure
and I'm going to ask Maria Lax to join us.
Maria Lax is a Finnish photographer based in London.
Her photos are mystical and magical,
and they've all got this incredible storytelling aspect
that I'm trying to capture in my own photography.
We'll learn about the steps she takes
to achieve this otherworldly look,
and we're going to see what we can create together.
Hey Maria, thank you so much for taking the time
to connect with me today.
- Absolutely.
- I am so impressed with your work.
What is it about night photography that you're drawn to?
- Well, where I'm from is basically the Arctic Circle
in Northern Finland.
So there's a lot of forest, not a lot of people.
So a lot of my photography is spent by myself in the woods
creating my own little worlds,
and that's kind of like reimagining real locations
so that they appear unreal.
And to me, nighttime's perfect for that
because even like the most mundane spot looks different.
- How would you feel about stepping outside
to capture some night photos together using your process?
- That sounds amazing.
I don't really shoot in London that much.
So like any excuse to get out there and get shooting,
that sounds really fun.
(quirky music playing)
- I'm really excited to learn more about
night photography because my regular process
relies on finding what's obvious and apparent,
and now I'm going for something
a little bit more mysterious.
- The first element of photography for me is finding light.
So I'll find light sources that look good,
have interesting color,
whatever light is calling your name,
go towards that light.
What I really like is like different colored windows.
Love doing like wider shots,
but then like focusing on a window or a detail
that's almost telling a story.
Night mode is incredibly light sensitive.
I love that.
- So step one is finding an amazing light source.
Make some magic.
Ooh, it smells not good.
Not cute.
The interesting part about night mode
is that iPhone can detect light in your frame
and turns on night mode automatically for you.
Depending upon how much darkness there is,
you might want to add more capture time
to capture more light,
which means whenever you see auto versus max
you might want to bump it up to max
just to give yourself more time to let in more light.
When I use night mode
I find that sometimes the colors are just like so vibrant,
even more colors than I think I can actually see in life.
- Oh, it's my favorite, it's warm red light.
- Oh my gosh.
This is amazing.
(camera clicks)
- The second thing is to experiment with something
that can make it really unique.
Just like finding that unusual way
to approach a very basic thing like a tree.
I like putting stuff in front of the lens
and just seeing what happens.
I've just got this bit of thin plastic.
Trial and error sometimes looks awful.
I'm gonna try and put flash on
and see what happens if I just flash into the branches.
I think when we edit that,
that might look really really nice,
once like really push the contrast and stuff.
(camera clicks)
- I've got a couple of objects in my bag to experiment with.
I grabbed a piece of silverware,
and I had like a shiny surface.
Y'all see that?
It's catching the light perfectly.
Yes, we're in business.
- What I might actually do
is take a bit of Vaseline at this point,
and just getting a thin piece of plastic
and putting the Vaseline on that,
to kind of create blur.
Sometimes I've used lipstick as well,
but definitely do not put it on the lens
because it's really hard to get off.
Sometimes it gives it a bit of softness
and then sometimes, yeah, it's quite
otherworldly effects that it does.
(camera clicks)
Definitely some alien abduction stuff going on in this shot.
Might have to flip the shot and post
to kind of make it make more sense.
- I'm just kind of playing around with this mesh.
The material is fun.
It adds a cool texture.
And that's really what I wanted was just,
something to kind of give me a fog, misty look?
I don't know if it's going to work but,
you got to risk it for the biscuit.
(camera clicks)
- Nowadays there's so much pressure to be perfect.
And pressure to be immediately good
at everything that you do.
The thing that is easily forgotten
is that nobody's going to just go out and shoot
perfect photo one after the other.
(camera clicks)
And that's fine.
That's how you get to the good stuff
by just going the hard way through the mistakes.
- I don't have any Vaseline
but I definitely have a lot of breath so let's try it.
(Landon exhales)
(laughs) I probably look crazy.
Wait, that's great.
Kind of stinking moody!
I feel really good about the shots that I got tonight.
Like I did not expect to have that many great shots.
(camera clicks)
- The third thing is editing the photo.
Taking the photos and seeing how you like
reach the full potential of that image.
I'm going to do the photo of the tree.
The photo looks a bit funny,
so the tree's kind of like sideways,
but the light's also coming from the side
and I said I might flip it.
I'm just going to crop the image a little bit.
There's like a bit of the branch
that I really don't want to see.
So now that's cropped, I've got the gel in front of the lens
and that added the color and it added a bit of blur.
I might add a tiny bit of contrast,
'cause there's like a light leak coming in,
which I like, and now that I've flipped it
the light leak comes from above,
which is like aliens.
(Landon laughs)
I'm just going to go crazy with the coloring.
I'm going to go really, really, really strong saturation.
When you get a bit scared and a bit shook
that it looks too much,
then take it a notch down and then you're perfect.
You know what I'm also going to do,
you know like vignetting,
like you usually use it to make the edges darker?
I'm just going to make them a little bit lighter
to see if I can create like, almost like a leaked film look.
And I'm done!
- This is great.
I love seeing you play around
and it really just makes me want to have more fun
with my photography in general.
- Everybody can be creative, just go out there
and you'll get amazing stuff
and you'll get better at it as you go.
- I love that.
- There's this myth that creativity is that like,
oh, some people are creative
and some people are not, that's not true.
- Absolutely.
You are speaking my love language right now.
I'm like, I'm writing this down.
I'm not getting all blushed
'cause like that's what I'm passionate about.
I'm like great!
- Amazing.
Thank you so much for your wisdom.
- Awesome, bye!
(quirky music)
- And that my friends is how you shoot and edit
otherworldly photos on iPhone.
I found that good lighting and clever framing
really transported me out of everyday locations
and into these dreamy supernatural spaces.
Next, I tried out some things
to add an extra layer of depth to my photos
as I was taking them.
And the last step was to play with colors
in the edit process to give my photos
that otherworldly element.
Thank you all so much for watching, creating,
and trying something new today.
Remember, we'll be adding episodes regularly
so feel free to subscribe.
Also give us a Like if you liked it.
And as always, keep an eye out for Today at Apple sessions
in Apple stores near you.
The sessions and our Creatives are all there
to help you get more creative using your devices,
whether that be taking a great photo,
making a cool video, or even writing a line of code.
Remember that if you're sharing photos,
the best way for us to see them
is if you use the hashtag #todayatapple.
Until next time, stay creative.
Ciao for now!
(quirky music)