How I made this mobile photo with an unusual POV an abstract image

Just an exercise to make the lines more obtrusive to the eye than the subject.

I took a picture which I thought was ideal for the theme of lines, but the resulting image ended up sub-optimal in the brightness and clarity. Here is how mobile photo editing “saved” the picture and gave it a different life as an abstract image.

Following the tutorial, I also have more photographs of the same subject from different POVs ;)

When I took this picture, I already had the intention to focus on “lines” as the theme. Hence the unusual point of view in the original image. I had quite brutally sliced off a good portion of this hanging art, and focused 2/3 of the space on the lines and rods that support the cut-out pieces hanging in mid-air. As usual, I was using my iPhone :P and camera+, and as much as the app allowed me, I exposed for the greatest clarity I can achieve on the thin lines that suspend the many cutouts.

The result was not terribly admirable. :P

So I thought to fiddle with it on Camera+. I used the apps – Camera+ and VSCOcam – mainly to highlight the lines in the image.

Left Screen – Camera +; Right Screen – VSCOcam

Before this photo, I did not realise that I can use multiple effects at the same time on Camera+!

1. Camera+
   • When editing the photo, one has the options for Scenes, Adjust, Crop, Effects and Borders lined up at the bottom of the screen.
     • Scenes are good for giving you one-click options like backlit, “flash and cloudy etc, to colour-correct the photo.
     • But I like to have greater control of the image, so I went straight to Effects instead. Clicking on Effects calls up the sub-menu of colour filters. There are a few sets of filters, each with 9 filters within the set.
     • Click on a specific filter e.g. HDR to apply the filter. There are Remove and Advance options on this screen.
     • Click on Advance. This is where you have the option to adjust the strength of the filter by using the slider that appears. (as pictured on the screen shot on the left.)
     • Click on Add Effect, to layer on a second and third effect.
     • Remember, the objective I had was to bring out the lines in the photo. This is the resulting image from Camera+
2. VSCOcam – The colour filters are lined up at the bottom of the screen. I ran the same image through the black and white filters of both Camera+ and VSCOcam and preferred the Classic filter from the latter app for this particular picture. The final image was converted to black and white, which I feel achieves my objective of emphasizing the lines in the image. 

Here’s the final black and white, and the original image again.

Original thoughts of the black and white image can be found on a previous post here.

Here are two other photos of travellers navigating the airport environment. Just by taking the airport with the artwork in the foreground makes for an unusual POV. These photos are edited in Photoshop.

I’ll be happy to hear if you have other ways of editing to share and other comments. :)

Of the mobile photo apps used in this post, VSCOcam can be downloaded for free, Camera+ will come at a cost. And while each individual app may take some exploring and getting used to, I find that part of the fun is the “exploring” and seeing what I can do with it. It also saves me time for image creation for this blog :P since I am often fiddling with my photos on the train and during downtimes when I am waiting for something.