Without fail,
every single time
I go out and take photographs with my mobile phone,
I am constantly blown away by the quality of the files,
but above everything else,
when I am just using my mobile phone, I’m
enjoying my photography now more than ever.
So in this video I thought I'd go through
everything that went into this recent picture
I took of the Prince of Wales Bridge with my iPhone;
how I took the photograph, how it was edited in Lightroom
Mobile on my iPad, and then the final print.
So let's rewind
and go through the complete
mobile workflow.
Okay, so first of all, the location.
Now, for this photograph, I headed to
the iconic Prince of Wales Bridge, which spans for 3.2
miles from the South West of England,
across the River Severn to the South East of Wales.
Formerly named the Second Severn Crossing Bridge,
I got the idea to head there, having seen some photographs
in a photography book by Drew Buckley.
So I met up at a nearby Café with my friend Anthony Crothers,
and we took the short
half mile or so walk to the underside of the bridge.
Now, as for the kit, I was using my iPhone 14
Pro Max and had this mounted on my tripod.
I'd recently bought myself this phone mount from Joby,
which is small, has a great hold on the phone
because it's also magsafe and is quick and easy to set up.
But with the windy conditions as they were,
it didn't quite hold the phone still enough.
So instead I put my phone into my trusty SmallRig Cage.
Being metal, this is a lot more robust
and coped way better with the wind.
Now I knew I wanted to do a long exposure
and before I've used the Lightroom mobile app for this
and it works
great for long exposures up to a maximum of 5 seconds.
But I wanted to do a 30
second exposure to really smooth the water out,
so instead used one of the many apps I have that can do this
called Even Longer.
Now, to shoot in RAW,
you do need to upgrade to the pro version,
but it's not expensive by any means
and it does come with a lot more functions.
So to take the 30 second long exposure
with the phone securely on the tripod
using the Even Longer
app, I just adjusted the exposure time to 30 seconds,
then press the shutter button and after a three
second countdown, it then takes the long exposure.
Now, this is an incredibly easy app to use,
and the great thing is when you're doing
these long exposures,
you don't need to have any neutral density filters
fitted at all.
Now, all of the editing I did on my iPad
and as the Even Longer app creates a folder on your phone
where all the images are saved, first of all, in Lightroom
Mobile on my phone, I created a new album.
I called this one The Prince of Wales Bridge.
Then I just add the photographs in by navigating
to the Even Longer folder,
tap on one image,
then tap on Select All and Open.
This folder now syncs with Lightroom
on all of the devices that I have Lightroom installed.
I'm going to edit the image on my iPad,
so I'll open that up and go to Lightroom Mobile.
And here's the Prince of Wales Bridge
folder that has synched across.
Now, one of the things I really love about this
mobile workflow is not having to use memory cards;
taking them out of the camera, inserting into a card reader
and importing the files.
This all just happens automatically,
and the great thing
is because of the way that everything
syncs, you can automatically have backups.
So now I have the images on my iPad,
let's go through the editing.
Now as I pinch to zoom in on this, you can see straight away
how a square crop will work really well and how it gives us
three very distinct parts to the picture.
We have
the underside of the bridge, the sky, and also the muddy area
with these fantastic channels and patterning.
So I'll start off by going to the crop tool
and straightening the horizon
by clicking on the straighten tool.
It was pretty much spot on anyway, and that's
because I also
used the spirit level
in the Even Longer app when I was taking the photograph.
I'll now go to the aspect and choose 1 x 1.
I'll drag the corners in a little
to get the composition that I want
and position it so that this main structure
of the bridge here, is in the middle
and the horizon line is as near as possible
on that lower third.
That's looking good, so I'll tap on Done.
So because there are three very distinct areas of the picture
I can use masking to edit each of them individually.
I'll start with the sky to bring back some of the detail there,
so I'll tap on the masking and then tap on the plus
icon to add a mask, and I'll choose Select Sky.
I'll rename this mask to Sky.
Now we can see from the Red overlay that as well as the sky,
it's also included a little bit of the underside of the bridge.
So I need to remove or subtract that.
So I'll tap on subtract from sky.
Now rather than using a brush to do that
and potentially
brushing away more than I want, I'm going to use colour range.
I’ll drag this target here over the part of the bridge
where we can see the red overlay and straight away
it removes the red overlay,
meaning the underside of the bridge
is no longer part of the sky mask.
So I'll tap on, apply to accept that and then jump
to the light section and bring down the exposure a bit.
I'll also go to
the effect section and increase the dehaze
to bring back a bit more detail in the sky.
Now doing
that does tend to increase the saturation in the blues
and normally I might reduce this,
but as this is going to be a black and white, I'll leave it.
Okay, so that's the sky sorted.
Next, I'll edit the underside of the bridge.
So again, I'll use a
mask, I'll tap on the plus icon and I'll use a brush.
I'll increase the size of the brush,
adjust the hardness a little and make sure the flow is at 100.
Then I'll start brushing over the bridge, which covers it
in the Red overlay, meaning that area is being selected.
I'll just reduce the size of the brush a bit and do the sides
and this bit at the bottom.
I'll now rename this mask to bridge.
Now you can see how the auto mask does a great job
of restricting the overlay to the bridge,
although it has spilled over a little bit here onto the sky.
So I need to subtract that.
So I'll tap on subtract from bridge
and then choose select sky and it's done.
Now this blows me away.
Check out the dynamic range in this file
as I increase the exposure and then the shadows.
The detail coming out of those dark shadow areas is incredible.
Anyway, I'll adjust the exposure and the shadows
to around about here.
I'll also go to the effects section
and add some clarity which works brilliant on structures
like this.
I'll add a touch of texture
and then I'll go to the detail section and add some sharpening.
Okay, that looks good for now.
Now I’ll just do a little bit to this bottom area.
I'll add a mask and use a linear gradient.
I'll drag upwards from the bottom
so that the area selected
is mainly the mud, but also spilling over onto the water.
I'll rename this mask to mud.
I’ll then increase the exposure a little
add, a little bit of clarity
and also a bit of texture.
Now let's just see how far we've come so far.
Now, obviously, we gave this a 1 x 1 crop,
but to see a before and after of the edits,
just press down on the picture and release
to see before, after, before, after.
That's looking great.
So now I want to make this a black and white
and to do that I want to use a preset
and the one I want is found in the “your” section and B&W ...
this one here called Punch.
Now, if I just clicked to apply that preset,
it will overwrite everything that we've done so far because
presets, unlike profiles, come with all the edits still there.
So we don't want that to happen.
Instead, I'll tap up the top here and choose
Edit in Photoshop.
That then sends the file into Photoshop on my iPad and
opens it up.
Now in
Photoshop I do nothing other than tap Send to Lightroom.
Doing this has now created a copy.
If I tap on this one and then tap on the information
icon, you can see this is the original edit.
But then if I
tap on the next one along, you can see this is a PSD ...
this is the copy.
And if we look at the adjustments,
you can see they are all at their default.
So this is the copy where the edits were done
and have been baked in.
Now having this copy is a really good thing
because it means
our original image that we've done
all the edits on so far is nice and safe.
So now we can apply the preset to this copy
and have it applied on top of everything that we've done.
So now I'll add the black and white punch preset.
I think I’ll just the strength of it just a little bit.
And finally I’ll add a vignette by going to the masking,
tapping to add a mask and choosing radial gradient.
I’ll press down and drag outwards
and then tap to invert the mask
so that it affects the outside areas.
And then I'll just reduce the exposure a touch and we're done.
So this is before and this is after.
So now that I've finished editing on the iPad,
which I literally could have done anywhere,
I dive into Lightroom
on my desktop computer so that I can look at the image
on my colour calibrated display.
The image I’ve edited
is in Lightroom because it automatically syncs across.
So now I can check it out on my colour calibrated display
to make sure it looks perfect before I print it out.
And yes, on my BenQ SW321C it looks great.
I don't need to adjust anything.
So to print it out,
I just send it over to the Canon Pro print layout software.
And with this Permajet paper I'm using,
I just choose the recommended media type.
Choose the correct paper profile
and press print.
And this is the result.
I only had A4 of this new paper, but I'm definitely going
to send this one away to get it printed much larger.
So keep an eye on my Instagram and Facebook
because I'll share the result there.
But the quality of
this is so good this could easily cope being A2.
So there you go, the complete mobile workflow
from going out with my mobile phone,
taking the picture,
editing it on my iPad and ending up with the final print.
I am just loving this mobile workflow and how easy
and accessible it makes everything.
It's exciting times to be a photographer, it really is.
But on that note, if you've enjoyed this,
if you got something from it,
as always, I'd really appreciate a thumbs up.
And if you haven't yet,
click on subscribe
because as you know, that's just a great free way
that you can support this channel.
But for now, that's me. I'm done.
I'm going off out with my phone.
I'll see you in the next video.