Hello, welcome to my blog! This post is an introduction, to what this site is about and what you can expect, especially with iPhone photography (iPhoneography). At the end of the post, I share my favourite iPhone photo apps along with a couple of my photos and what gear I use.
Who am I?
My name is Cian, I am based in London and I am a big fan of iPhoneography apps since around the time of the iPhone 5. Hipstamatic was my jam for many years, I even had a blog about it for a good while, I am interested in broader apps these days including video.
What is this site about?
The idea is to share hopefully interesting things about photography on the iPhone and iPad. That might include news on new apps or updates, occasional app reviews or tips, some of my own work and ultimately I'd like to be in a place where I get into prints, maybe even sell a few and I can share that journey with you.
I am interested in tech as a whole, so I may write about more general topics like iOS 15 and Windows 11 if I find it interesting enough to share like this week I have been using the new iCloud Mail Custom Domains and Hide My Email, which are cool features that could be worth a write-up.
I'd be interested in having a weekly wrap up type post and maybe having a mailing list at some point but I don't want to get ahead of myself. The first test is how good Ghost works on this server and whether it's viable, whether issues crop up or anything that takes away from getting content on here.
What is this site running on?
I am new to Ghost, which is what this site is running on, I was looking for an alternative to WordPress, which I know much more about, so this is an opportunity to learn another platform and hopefully make use of its features such as the subscription and mailing list options. I'll adjust the site as I get more familiar with how it all works!
This site is running on a DigitalOcean $6 Droplet, I set the whole thing on my phone and it was pretty straightforward, I used this video series as a guide. I have more to do on the site, just started removing the demo content, then I'll add pages that are currently missing, email, try out some themes, learn more about the authoring experience etc., all that fun stuff!
Favourite photo apps
Getting back to iPhone photography here are some of my favourite photo apps on iPhone and iPad, which I recommend:
Camera - Halide, ProCamera, Firstlight, CameraPixels
Editing - Darkroom, Pixelmator Photo, RAW Power, Affinity Photo
Textures - Mextures, Distressed FX
Filters and presets - RNI Films, RNI Aero, VSCO, Afterlight
Speciality - Nception, Defqt, LD, Spectre
Utility - Retouch, Metapho, Frame Grabber, Big Photos
You can also follow me on Instagram, where I am reasonable active, here is the link - myphotoyear on Instagram. Here are a few examples from their:
and another one:
My gear
I have an iPhone 11, which is a good phone, not so much the ultrawide camera but the main wide camera is great and was a fantastic upgrade over an iPhone 7 Plus. I'll be looking at the iPhone 13, what would really tip the balance if Apple brings ProRAW to all the models this time. I really wanted to try out ProRAW but couldn't justify the upgrade last year for an iPhone 12 Pro. I have an iPad 10.5, which is showing its age, mostly because of the battery life which is now quite poor but it's still a powerful bit of kit.
I have a Windows 10 desktop PC, an Intel NUC 7th generation, which looks like it will miss out on the Windows 11 upgrade, unfortunately, because the requirements aren't met.
I have some big cameras, which I use sometimes, a couple of Panasonic Micro Four Thirds, I also have a Lensbaby Trio lens which is fun to use. I have Canon Selphy and Fujifilm Instax printers, I'm really interested in the Epson EcoTank ET-8550 as a possible purchase to explore printing more.
Wrap up
If you made it this far, well done, that was my first post! I want to make a go of this blog, I have had other blogs before but I only do so much with them before moving on, here I want to be more focused on the content, rather than anything else. I hope you will stick around. Thanks for reading.