 You know, in this city, I see beautiful memories being made every day. And they're being preserved on these. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just most people don't know how to use these devices to their highest potential. Here, let me help you with that. In our hands, we hold a magnificent piece of engineering. But most people usually don't think about how to frame a shot, know when to use a flash, or how to apply tasteful filters. Technology has progressed to the point where we can no longer blame slow processors, small sensors, and bad lenses. We can only blame ourselves. Luckily, I'm going to show you how I do it. It all starts with capture. There are certain things you can tweak with software, but ultimately you need to begin with a well-exposed, sharp starting point. I'll take a minimum of three shots for any picture I'm trying to capture, sometimes many more. If you've got burst mode, definitely use it. There are a lot of camera replacement apps available, but for me the stock app is good enough for just about any situation, with speed outweighing any additional functionality provided by third-party apps. The stock app is accessible from almost any corner of the OS, and has gotten progressively better over the years. The grid overlay is handy, I usually keep it on, and helps keep the rule of thirds always in the forefront of my mind. Now I'm a big fan of bold, symmetrical lines that draw the eye towards a particular part of the image. All-encompassing wide-angle shots are also among my favorite, as you could probably gather from watching a lot of the videos on our site. The grid feature is key to keeping these scenes lined up and looking clean. Another useful feature in the stock app is the ability to lock focus and exposure by long pressing on a point in the scene, disabling the auto-exposure and auto-focus and metering from that specific point. This is important when trying to expose or focus on something that isn't the most prominent part of the image, which is the default behavior of the app. For more control, apps like VSCOcam or Camera Plus allow you to specify different points for focus, exposure, and in the case of Camera Plus, white balance. This additional control does come in handy, but it requires a few extra seconds to find and launch the app. More often than not, I'm able to get the stock app to expose the way I'd like using exposure and focus lock. The iPhone 5S has one of the best image sensors of any phone, but the latitude, or the range between the darkest and brightest points of the image, is still a limiting factor. This becomes obvious when shooting a high contrast scene. The most common example is a bright sky blowing out when exposing for details on the ground below. This is where HDR comes in. By combining multiple exposures into a single composite image, you can effectively increase the available range of the image sensor. It's a technique used everywhere from mobile photography to digital cinema. Some use it as an art form itself, but I prefer to use it subtly. Stock HDR is handy in a pinch. If I need to quickly capture a scene where I'm forced to make a tradeoff between exposing for the subject and exposing for the background, I'll hit the HDR button and expose for the subject. This can save blown out windows and skies while maintaining proper exposure on the subject you can. If I've got a few extra seconds and there's little movement in the scene, a much better option is a third party app called Pro HDR. This allows you to select two individual exposure points. I choose two points that are not quite the brightest and darkest parts of the image so it doesn't look over-processed and fake. The app then captures both images back to back and immediately combines them. You can then make tweaks to the saturation, contrast, and brightness of the final composite. I try to get as flat an image as possible so it's more flexible in the processing stage. Pro HDR will also combine images from the camera roll, so if you deliberately capture the same frame with two different exposure points, you can put together an HDR image after the fact. If you combine this with an app like AutoStations, you can put together some pretty amazing HDR panoramas. My next step is processing. Over the past few years, I've gone through countless photo apps on multiple platforms on a quest for the perfect photo workflow. I went through a PhotoForge 2 and PictureShow PowerCombo phase, then I was really into SwankoLab for its unique filters and Noir Photo for black and white shots. By bouncing between multiple apps, I was able to overcome their individual weaknesses, but I was left endlessly importing and exporting images to my camera roll. Luckily though, an app has emerged that combines great photo editing tools with fantastic filter options. For now, my go-to app is Viscocam. I'm a big fan of Viscocam's library tool. This allows me to bulk import photos from the camera roll, quickly swipe between them to judge the shots, flag the ones I'd like to process, and then bulk delete the ones I don't. Once I've settled on a shot, I dive directly into the photo editing tools, leaving the filter selection for later. I like to get my image on a good baseline before stylizing. Viscocam has over a dozen tools available, each with a strength adjustment slider. The key here is moderation. The images here are really compressed, and you can only push them so far before they fall apart and become noisy. I usually start with the sharpen tool. One or two points in this tool can really make a photo pop, and if you've missed the focus a bit, somewhere in the 4-6 range can help you fake it. You can usually get away with it on mobile. Just keep in mind that as you're sharpening the image, you're also sharpening the noise. From there, I'll push my exposure a point or two in either direction if needed. I find this tool to be particularly susceptible to noise when adjusting it in either direction. Too much can just make it look ugly. If a shot is overexposed, sometimes the best treatment is to just roll with it. Given the right filter, it can lend some drama to an otherwise dull image. From there, I jump into the color temperature adjustment. Dragging to left or right moves the image's overall temperature to be warmer or cooler. My personal preference is to keep things a bit cooler, but that's just me. This can also come in handy if you're under some ugly fluorescent lights. Between the temperature tool and a tint tool, I usually strive to get skin tones as accurate as possible. I also lean on the highlight save tool, which reduces the brightest parts of the image only. You can never really get the detail back from blown out highlights, but it can help make the effect less jarring. Like I said before though, just letting it go can be kinda cool. The vignette tool is basic, but it does help draw the eye to the center of the image. It's also one of the most overused tricks in the book, and I constantly have to stop myself from vignetting every single shot I take. But it can come in handy. VSCO Cam has the best filters I've ever used on a mobile app. They range from subtle to dramatic, and each allows you to adjust them, like the editing tools on a scale of 1 to 12. I have no real rule of thumb for selecting a filter, but I generally try to find presets that compliment the environment in which the shot was taken. Personally I'm a fan of the Levi's presets, as well as B1 and B5 for black and white shots. Once I settle on a filter, I'll head back to the editing tools and make any final tweaks. Usually I'll reduce the contrast a bit or dial down the saturation. After that, it's a simple process to export the shots back to the camera roll, or to apps like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. On occasion, with the right shot, adding fake depth of field can really make an image stand out. Unfortunately, the way most people go about doing this is using Instagram's circle focus filter, which always looks bad. Using an app called Big Lens, I'm able to selectively trace around the subject I'd like to keep in focus. The program will then automatically generate a mask and blur the background. From there, I can fine tune the background blur, as well as unblur the subject. I always use the lowest blur strength setting. In fact, I wish there was a lower setting. A small amount of blurring goes a long way. I should also note that there's a high potential of this image looking like garbage, so be careful. Once I've captured, processed, and shared my images with the world, it's time to back them up and clear them off my device. Some people chase inbox zero. I chase camera roll zero. There's no perfect solution for photo storage right now, but I found a good balance between Google Plus for full resolution backups of every single photo I take, regardless of whether I process it, and Flickr for just the photos I consider finished. It's refreshing to have a spot for my finished photos that isn't among the sea of receipts. So this is my process for making photos on iOS. It's not perfect, it's always changing, and it's only one of a million possible ways to do it. But it works for me.