ONE PHOTO - A GUEST POST BY CHARISSA FISCHKELTA @JOYFULFOUR

I'm not a trained photographer but I am studying to become one.  In fact my photography journey actually started out with the iPhone.  Like most people I discovered Instagram and fell in love with photography.  Seeing all these wonderful little squares filled with different perspectives, colors, creativity.  Completely inspired, I wanted to learn as much as could.  I would scour the internet on tips of how to take better pictures with my iPhone.  Then eventually started taking mobile photography courses.  I wanted to learn how to take better pictures of my kids. I wanted to capture these beautiful joyful moments that my children & I could look back on when they are older.  
I have already pictured that moment in my mind. Us all together laughing & me telling them what they were like at that age.  
That’s why my iPhone is my go to on a daily basis.  As a mom of 4 I love the quickness of the iPhone. You have the ability to move around and shoot from pretty much any angle.  The focusing is definitely easier which allows you to capture amazing candid shots.  Plus some of these editing apps are just plain fantastic. 


In this photo my daughter was dressed up in one of her “fancy” dresses (as she likes to call them) and jumping on her bed. I knew right away I wanted to capture this moment. Her little curls bouncing as she jumped.  The pure joy in her face the higher she tried to go.  
Because she was jumping every where I wanted to remove any distractions in the picture. So, I quickly removed the stuff animals and picture on her wall.  Her dresser is on the opposite wall so I used that as my tripod to help stabilize the phone.
The more stable the phone is the better focus you will achieve.  So any chance you get especially in movement photos try to stabilize your phone on something.  It could be an actual tripod (you can find some really cheap ones on amazon), your knee, tables, the floor, anything really. I used the native camera on my iPhone locked focus in the area of her bottom portion of her dress and legs and used burst mode.  As you can see not everything is in focus and I knew that would happen. My goal was to focus on her feet jumping off the bed.
With iPhone action shots you need a lot of light and I mean a lot. So outside is always best.  The first thing I do when the girls get up is pull back the shades all the way and push the curtains to the side.  So that their room fills up with as much light as it can. Now I have one less thing to worry about when taking quick candid moments in their room.
I then brought the picture into the VSCO Cam app used the C1 filter (one of my favs) to help brighten and boost the colors.  Sharpened it a little and then brought it into the PicTapGo app.  I added the crispity (another fav)  for a tad more sharpness and clarity and then used the air filter to give it that airy feeling.
As I mentioned earlier there are some pretty amazing editing apps out there.  When it comes to applying the filter I always start at the lowest strength and increase slowly to avoid over processing.
Along with my go to apps VSCO Cam & PicTapGo, I love these apps: 
  • Afterlight (great for landscape pics)
  • Snapseed (great for local adjustments)
  • Priime  (great for styled pics)
  • Mextures (really cool textures and overlays)
  • Big Lens (fantastic blur tool)         
  • Retouch (great for removing little distractions)
You can see more of Charissa's beautiful iphone photography on her instagram feed.