Turn ordinary photos into extraordinary iPhoneography with textures

After seeing the amazing images you have been sharing on Instagram, it is clear you are all enjoying your newly discovered creativity. In today’s lesson I hope to share a new idea to fuel your own creative adventures. Today’s lesson is a bit subjective, but I hope you learn a new idea and use it to make some of your own magic.

A fun way to add interest and mystery to your iPhone imagery is the use of textures. What are textures, you ask? In short, the idea is to take an image of the texture you might find in a burlap sack, brick wall, etc. Apply it over your original image so that only the texture can be seen and not the color. That’s pretty much the idea behind it, but it might be better just to look at an example…

I’ve found there are good ways and not so good ways to apply textures. Before we get into that, there are a variety of apps that can provide your images with texture. Right now, I digDistressed FX. If you don’t feel like spending money, the ‘Vintage’ or ‘Grunge’ filters inSnapseed do a pretty good job. Here’s a quick look at some of the textures Distressed FX offers.

Because textures will often make your images visually busy, I try to avoid using them in scenes packed with details. Where textures really excel are scenes with minimal visual elements. My personal preference is big sky scenes. We will take a look at a few before and afters here, but feel free to explore compositions that suit your own fancy.

Assignment

Pretty slick stuff. I know it’s not for everyone, but if you are looking for a fun way to turn a rather boring scene into something a bit more interesting, give some textures a try. If you do, please tag your photos with #iDBTextures and share them on Instagram. I’ll select a few of my favorites to highlight in next month’s post. Until then, get out there and make some magic!

Close up on some of your work

Here are a few of my favorites pictures of yours that were tagged with the #iDBFindFocus hashtag on Instagram:

Photo by @chetanthaker

Photo by @thisinstagrammerneversleeps

Photo by @armineh29

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