Here are my favourite and best iPhone photography / best instagram images .. so far.

Camera phone still cannot beat its big brothers, like the DSLR or even some of the compacts. Maybe it never will, but who knows, technology will only get better. But for now, the convenience of having a good little camera in my pocket all the time is wonderful since I cannot always be carrying the DSLR or the M9 or even the smaller Micro Four-Thirds camera, like the Olympus E-P3 or Panasonic GF-1.

Oh, by the way, thank you to those who have been asking about my mum. Thank God that she is now home, recovering well.

The mobile phone technology has advanced so much that the combination of powerful processor and many excellent photography apps has created an opportunity for us to be more creative while on the go. I just wish the iPhone battery technology will also advance so it can last for at least 12 hours of shooting before I come home and charge it. OK, minus the breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee breaks, maybe 8 hours of non stop shooting.

The following two images below touched me a lot. I saw her couple weeks back in Little India when I accompanied my cousin to shoot there. She’s easily 70+ years old and she was pushing a cart full of flattened boxes. She probably collected those unused boxes from somewhere and was going to sell them for some cash. She crossed the road to move to the other side. A car passed by, much faster than her as you can tell from the blurry image of the car. Human vs Machine. To put things in perspective, the things I complain about in my life do not seem bad at all.

Here is another one from that morning shoot in Little India. A man crossing the road on his bike. It’s black and white, but if you can tell from the position, he crossed when the red man was still on. 

The following were taken during my recent trip to Bali in December for a short family vacation. Taken mainly in Kuta. They were processed by the Instagram app and couple other iPhone apps on the iPhone itself. Beautiful Kuta sunset.

I did very little post processing to the image below. Only bumped up the contrast a little bit and cropped to square format. Amazing phone camera.

The famous war photographer, Robert Capa, once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.” When I saw waves crashing onto the rocks along the Kuta beach, I thought it would be cool if I could take some shots. To get the impact, I need to be close. Really close. And my newly bought iPhone 4s (it was less than a week when I brought it to Bali with me) was splashed with the salt water. Yummy. But I managed to quickly clean it up. It’s still functioning until now. Please don’t tell Apple when one day it stops working and I will go to claim the warranty. 

This one was taken in the morning. Beautiful morning. Clear blue sky and the beach chairs were just waiting for tourists to sit on them. And … can you see the moon right in the center of the top part? The full resolution image shows that very  clearly.

And this one was really a lucky shot. I was in the car when I shot this on a rainy day in Kuta. The car window was wet, lots of water droplets. I saw the couple waiting at the shelter from afar and I focused on the water droplets and took the shot when our car passed by them.

I tried to use the iPhone to shoot moving subjects. These beach boys were playing soccer. I was standing on a big rock, which you can tell from the angle of the shots.

And some more moving subjects.  The cousins.

And last one from Kuta, the model in Bali. 

Shooting moving subjects indoor with iPhone is challenging since we can’t really control the shutter speed. Hence, when shooting indoor and the light is not bright enough to give you fast shutter speed to freeze the movement, the subjects will be blurry. But I still love these images of the two little monkeys jumping on the bed. I tried to minimize the blur by “clicking” the shutter button when they were at the peak of their jump.

When shooting portrait with iPhone, try to zoom in in order to minimize the distortion. iPhone has a wide lens and shooting portrait with wide lens won’t be pleasing, especially when you are too close to the subject. So, zoom in.

Few more portrait shots. These were taken at the Universal Studios. I love the setting they have there.

I seem to be addicted to shooting from inside a car on a rainy day. These two shots of cabs were shot when I was in another cab on the highway. The wet car window caused the distortion, which I like.

You should have seen these two in my previous post, but let me post them again here, because they are my favorites too. The panorama, shot with the excellent AutoStitch app.

And last but not least, I love leaf on the ground. You guys have known that from my previous posts. So, this will continue with my iPhone.

So, that’s it for now. See you in the next batch of my favorite images taken with the iPhone. You all keep shooting !!

This is one the famous temples in Bali, Pura Luhur Uluwatu, taken shortly after sunset. I took this in December 2007 during a vacation in Bali. The temple is located at the top of Uluwatu cliff about 70 meters above the Indian Ocean on the southern tip of Bali. The spot where I was offered a drop dead view of the waves crashing against the base of the cliff.

The sun had gone down below the horizon and the sky was getting darker fast. The wind was strong and it’s getting cold. I had butterflies in my stomach and I had to squat down to minimize the impact of the strong wind on me. I felt that I was going to be blown away by the wind. I was only few meters away from the edges of the cliff (both in front and behind me) and at that height, I didn’t dare to stand especially because of the strong wind that evening. I had to collapse my tripod legs all the way when I shot this using my 70-200mm lens zoomed all the way to 200mm so I could fill the frame. At ISO 200 and f/11, the shutter speed was more than a minute so I could get more lights coming in to the full frame sensor of my trusty Canon 1Ds Mark II.

I took few shots and the sky was already dark when I finished packing up my gears. I felt that I got more butterflies dancing in my stomach knowing that I still had to walk back on the path along the top of the cliff, very near to the edge, to the parking lot where I would be picked up by the driver whom I hired to drive me around. Next time I go there, I will make sure I have my flash light with me.

Never happen to me, but maybe this is what people see when they are drunk. I don’t know but I was too bored and decided to play with my lens’ manual focus ring and purposely set it to be out of focus. The photos were taken at Legian, Bali.

Hik !

Odalan at Legian Kaja Bali

Odalan is a Hindu ceremony in Bali to celebrate the anniversary of a temple. Based on their traditional calendar, it is celebrated every 6 months, or to be exact, every 210 days. The one I saw above was at the Legian Kaja temple at Legian, near Kuta. Unfortunately I was not allowed to go inside the temple. This could be different from one temple to another though. I read before that some temples allow visitors to come in during the ceremony. So I was only shooting from the road side just outside of the temple. Good thing that the temple was full and some worshipers had to sit outside, so I could shoot some activities.

The atmosphere was festive. Women came in their nice ‘kebaya’ and children were chatting and giggling. Some men who have finished their prayers earlier chose to sit outside of the temple so to allow others to be inside.

Toward the end of the ceremony, the atmosphere suddenly turned, for the lack of better word, a bit mystical when I heard a scream and saw a woman went into a trance. Another worshiper helped to bring her to go inside the temple. I was told there were few others inside the temple who also went into a trance. They were “treated” inside the temple to bring them back to normal.

I curiously asked one of the worshipers if I could suddenly went into a trance as well by watching and standing close to them. He confidently said “no way”. That wouldn’t even happen to him, he said. He went on to say that only certain people have the ability to go into a trance.

A Surfer on a Bike on Seminyak Beach

Kuta, Legian and Seminyak share a long stretch of beach in the west coast of Bali. And hence the usual beautiful sunset in Kuta can be viewed from either one of them. The wet portion of the dark fine sand beach will serve as a mirror and give you nice reflection to add into the composition.

I was hired to shoot family portraits in Bali last week and decided to leave one day earlier in order to find good photo spots for them. As they would be staying at Seminyak, I walked along the Seminyak beach in the late afternoon to check it out. The sunset was beautiful and I couldn’t ask for more. See additional two images below.

I am normally not a fan of shooting sunset without foreground interest. But I like the above image for its reflection on the ground. The dark portion on the lower right corner helps  to give additional depth to the photo.

So far, Boracay beach in the Philippines and Kuta, Legian and Seminyak in Bali are my favorite beaches for sunset. Hope to see more like these in the future.