Best Camera

"The best camera is the one that's with you."

How true, Chase, how true. How many times have you said "Man, I wish I had my camera!" I know I have. Everyone know the IPhone has a camera...I mean, what does the IPhone NOT have!
The latest camera app in the App Store is Chase Jarvis' Best Camera. It attempts to be an "all in one" app in which you can take an IPhone picture, edit it by adjusting filters like saturation, contrast, lighten, darken, vignette, and others...THEN send that photo to your favorite social networking site...as long as it's twitter or facebook. I bought the app immediately, and was instantly impressed. Now, this app does have some first run bugs. Photos uploaded to facebook are uploaded into a folder called Best Camera and have a title that says "Taken with Chase Jarvis Best Camera" that you can't change until after you log in to facebook and change it manually. Chase says this was dummy text that was overlooked in final production. It will be fixed in an update. Another problem is that sometimes the comment you add to the photo never makes it to the website. No biggie...add it later. A problem that is user related and not technically a problem is that you can only take one picture at a time from INSIDE the app...I constantly click the "shutter" when I take pictures of my baby boy in order to get a shot without motion blur (he never sits still). You have to take them with the regular IPhone camera, then load the pic you want to edit INTO the app.


All in All, great little app from a world class photographer. Great job Chase and I look forward to seeing what else you have in store for us.

You can download the app directly from your Iphone in the app store...search "Best Camera". It's currently $2.99 which is right on par with other camera apps.

You can find out more about Chase here.

More from Henderson

So I was in the back alley of some pretty cool shops in Henderson, TN. This particular alley had all kinds of obstacles strategically placed so they looked like the normal landscape of an alley. Now I havn't been in too many alley's, but I assume this would be how a normal alley would appear. So... I was roaming around taking pics as usual when around the corner there arose such a clatter, that I sprang to my feet to see what was the matter (couldn't resist). Little did he know (sorry, it's a habit) some skateboard punks flew by and snagged my camera right out of my hands....ok, kidding, they were really nice kids who just wanted to show off for the camera. They traversed the strategically placed crates and boxes in the alley as they had done hundreds of times before. I set my shutter speed and ISO as high as I could get it and fired away. Next time I'll be more prepared with pen and model releases for istock :)

Gritty

This is in the nice clean town of Henderson, TN... don't tell anybody.

One from the road...

Fotoshop Friday

Swing life away, originally uploaded by Ley Elliott.

Hooray for the first edition of Fotoshop Friday. Whew! Stay tuned for more.

I'm Baack....

Maybe I was never gone, but it's time to step things up. Look for some changes around these here parts.

Golson Wedding

Meet Kellie and Wesley. They got married on May 23, 2009. The wedding was held at the Chapel of Memories on the campus of MSU. Everything was decorated to perfection and the ceremony went off with a hitch...This is probably the most fun I've had photographing a wedding thus far in my short time as a photographer. It even rained, which I'm told is good luck...

Photo Restoration

Here I restored a picture of my grandfather from 1946.

A train comes around the bend near the Severstall plant. The clouds were very ominous today and the sun would peak through every now and then. This is an HDR image with 3 exposures including -2, 0, +2 exposure readings. Shot with Canon 40D on bracket mode and self timer. Shot at f11 at 1/60th of a second and iso 200. Merged with Photomatix.

Here is the before image of the train. It is just barely "ok". The clouds lacked detail and don't convey the mood that I was experiencing at the time. The grass in front was distracting so it was removed. Also, the buildings had fixtures that look kinda like spickets...I didn't like them so they were removed also...called it creative liberties, whatever.



As you can see, there is much more drama added to the above image. The whole point in photo retouching is to convey the mood that was felt at the time of exposure. Boom! Stormy, gritty factory, train coming around the bend. Ahhh, I can sleep tonight.

Ty Walker

This morning I had the opportunity to capture a few moments in little Ty Walker's life. He is an amazing baby who loved the camera. We had a great time shooting out in the country and it was a beautiful day for it.

The first of many

Hello folks, this is the first post of many. Welcome to my blog. Here you will find all things Ley Elliott Photography...and other stories, jokes, tutorials, photos, and anything else I find interesting and deem necessary. So, without further ado...I introduce to you the first photo. This is the ferris wheel at the Amory Railroad Festival last weekend. It is po-dunk, but it's where I grew up so...



This is another ride called Moby Dick aka "Spin and Puke"