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How to capture still life photos with Apple's iPhone 12 Pro
How to capture still life photos with Apple's iPhone 12 Pro
Taking beautiful professional-quality floral photos is now made even easier with iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. From Portrait mode to Apple ProRAW, says Apple.
Photography tips from Nathan Underwood of Tulipina, leading floral design studio, for capturing stunning floral photos at home on Apple's iPhone 12 Pro:
Setup
Everything begins with lighting. Look for diffused natural light, ideally coming from the side. If indoors, this typically comes by setting up about 0.5 to 1 meter from a window. If outdoors, find a space with even light, avoiding hotspots and shadows. Often this means looking for a spot with consistent shade.
The next component is the background, which is as simple as finding a neutral background (grays and blues work great) with minimal pattern. Avoid brick, stripes, dots, and other distracting patterns. The subject should really pop, and this combination of lighting and background does the trick.
Framing
For still lifes, framing the shot is key. While you can crop later, getting a correctly framed shot from the right angle and perspective is critical for ensuring that you have the best photo to work with. With iPhone, I nearly always choose the lens with the closest focal distance. On iPhone 12 Pro models, this is the Telephoto camera.
When framing a floral arrangement, place the subject in the center and make sure that the frame is evenly filled. I tend to handhold cameras, including iPhone, and use a slight downward angle (just a few degrees) from head-on with my subject. This ensures that you can see the vase, but also get great depth and dimensionality from the flowers, which are the stars.
Editing in the Photos App
There are a few go-to edits I apply to 99 percent of the images I take, all of which are done in the Photos app. These are personal preferences; you should experiment to find your own signature style. For example, I like to focus on crop or aspect ratio, exposure, saturation, and warmth.
To find these tools in the Edit workflow in Photos, tap a photo to view it in full screen and then tap the dial icon on the bottom and swipe through all the various options.
- Crop the photo as needed so that the flowers are filling the entire frame, making them as “in your face” as possible.
- Small increases in exposure brighten the frame and allow the arrangement to pop, especially on a mobile screen.
- For floral arrangements and other colorful still lifes, bumping the saturation a small amount (less than 10) further pops the colors and allows them to stand out.
- Finally, adjust the warmth of the photo. Generally this means cooling down the image just slightly for an elegant calming effect that’s also still very true true to life.
While all of these edits are simple, they are very meaningful to producing a fantastic final image that is ready to share and delight others.
