Iphoneography: Big Lens App

Since iphoneography has become such a huge part of my photography life, I though I'd write about another one of my favorite apps: Big Lens. I absolutely love the effect this app can have on your images. Big Lens is a depth of field app that allows you to zero in on a focal point in your phone image and then blur out the rest of it. You can choose how little or how large you want the blur to be with a pinch of your fingers on the screen. But that's only the first part of the process - it then gets so much better! Once you have your focal point chosen, there are filters you can choose that dramatically affect the background lighting in your photo. And a third great feature is that if you have any sort of naturally occurring "bokeh-like" lighting in your image, you can choose to change the shape of the bokeh. There are multiple shape options: stars, hearts, etc. This app also has a before-and-after preview, which is always helpful.

Here is my very basic process with this app:

The first step after importing your photo from your camera roll is to choose Basic or Advanced editing...I have only used the Basic Editing so far and, honestly, know nothing about the Advanced yet. Once you choose Basic Editing, you will choose whether your focal/blur effect will be circular or linear. You then use your finger on the screen to either increase or decrease the blur (by pinching with your fingers). You can also increase/decrease the blur by choosing Aperture at the bottom of the screen.

Once you have your Aperture chosen, step two is to choose "Filter". Each filter choice will dramatically change the background lighting of your image, while keeping the focus on your focal point. Some of the filters are beautiful and really make your image pop! The "Gray BG" filter can also be very dramatic - it will turn your entire image black and white, except for your focal point. I've included an example above (the leaf with the coffee cup).

The Lens option can be used if, as I mentioned above, you have an image with some natural bokeh already in it. The results can be really nice with the right photo. To try it out, tap on the "Lens" option at the bottom of the screen. You will then see all the shape options you can choose from. Again, this will only work if you have distinct bokeh in your image already. I've included two examples (and apologize that they're Christmas photos). One is of our tree lights, which I turned into heart shapes. The other is of our front porch lights, which I turned into star shapes.

And there you have it...another amazing app in this fantastic world of iphoneography. I hope this has been helpful, and I highly recommend the Big Lens app! It costs $0.99.