Shot on iPhone 12 Pro Max by Nathan Underwood. Flower Arrangements by Kiana Underwood.
Valentine’s Day is this Sunday and before the floral, festive love holiday, Apple shared a detailed post on “How to Capture Beautiful Flower Photos with iPhone 12 Pro Models.” And writing a professional flower photographer has tips that can be helpful for a variety of topics besides flowers.
Apple shared the new feature to get the most out of its iPhone 12 Pro camera systems in a Newsroom report today.
Nathan Underwood of Tulipina (@tulipinadesign), one of the world’s leading flower design studios, says the advanced camera systems on the iPhone 12 Pro models have made a fuller bloom in its floral photography.
Features like Apple ProRAW, the new LiDAR scanner, enhanced portrait mode and more make it easier than ever to take impressive photos with the iPhone.
In his own words, here’s Nathan’s approach to photographing flower arrangements from setup and setting up to using Portrait Mode, ProRAW and editing.
Set up
It all starts with lighting. Look for diffused natural light that comes ideally from the side. When indoors, it usually comes through setting up about 0.5 to 1 meter from a window. If you are outside, you need to find a space with even light, and avoid focal points and shadows. Often this means looking for a place with a consistent shade.
The next component is the background, which is as simple as finding a neutral background (gray and blues work great) with a minimal pattern. Avoid bricks, stripes, dots and other distracting patterns. The subject should really appear, and this combination of lighting and background does the trick.
Framework
For still lifes, the most important thing is to set up the recording. While you can cut later, it is critical to get a properly framed shot from the right angle and perspective to ensure you have the best photo to work with. With the iPhone, I almost always choose the lens with the nearest focal length. On the iPhone 12 Pro models, it’s the telephoto camera.
Place the topic in the middle when framing a flower arrangement and make sure the frame is evenly filled. I tend to hold cameras, including the iPhone, and use a slight downward angle (just a few degrees) from the front with my subject. This ensures that you can see the vase, but also get the depth and dimensionality of the flowers, which are the stars.
The telephoto camera offers 2x optical zoom range on iPhone 12 Pro and 2.5x on iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Portrait mode
For shots that go from camera to editing to upload, I like the portrait mode, as seen in the photo below, which is available on all iPhone 12 models. Portrait mode captures an incredible sense of depth that can be manipulated during editing in the Photos app, enabling an incredible variety of creativity. This is especially useful if you are shooting flower arrangements, given their complexity and dimensionality. If you do not want to take pictures of still lifes yet, portrait mode is your best friend.
Editing in the Photos app
There are some edits I apply to 99 percent of the images I take, all done in the Photos app. These are personal preferences; you have to experiment to find your own signature style. For example, I want to focus on the crop or image ratio, exposure, saturation and heat. To edit these tools in the Photo Workflow, tap a photo to see it in full screen, then tap the switch button at the bottom and swipe through all the different options.
- Cut the photo as needed so that the flowers fill the entire frame and make it as “as possible in your face”.
- Small increase in exposure brightens the framework and makes the arrangement jump, especially on a mobile screen.
- For flower arrangements and other colorful still lifes, push the colors a small amount (less than 10) further by dropping the colors and letting them stand out.
- Finally adjust the heat of the photo. In general, this means that the image is only slightly cooled for an elegant calming effect that is also still lifelike.
While all of these edits are simple, it is very meaningful to create a fantastic final image that is ready to be shared and enjoyed by others.Visit “For more information on accessing and using each tool”Edit photos and videos on iPhone. ”
Apple ProRAW
Something very exciting for me is the launch of Apple ProRAW on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, which delivers the absolute maximum amount of image information to apply deeper edits. This means that you can now record and output RAW images with iPhone, enabling new creative possibilities, and personally I can now easily record iPhone photos in my normal professional workflow after production with my DSLR. Just remember to turn on Apple ProRAW on your iPhone 12 Pro model to get started.
To get the most out of Apple ProRAW, I want to edit the image in Adobe Lightroom. In Lightroom I usually make the same changes as I would in the Photos app – crop or image ratio, exposure, saturation and heat – but especially for flower still life I like to enhance the specific flowers through the Radial filter tool , which allows me to select a small area where I can make specific edits. As seen in the photo below, this may mean increasing the exposure on a single flower pressed into the arrangement – a detail that can be seen with the naked eye but which is difficult for any camera to capture capture.
To get started with Apple ProRAW on iPhone 12 Pro or iPhone 12 Pro Max, select Settings> Camera> Formats and turn on the feature.
Feel free to visit for more examples of flower photography and inspiration for arrangements @tulipinadesign.
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