Being a photographer for the last 12 years it is almost known to your wife and the rest of your family that when you go somewhere on vacation (even if it is just the weekend) you are probably going to bring your big 'ole DSLR and lug it around with you all weekend. Well, I have to say that I am pretty proud of myself. A few weekends ago my wife (Kim) and I went up to Arlington for the weekend. We caught a Rangers game and the next day we headed over to Six Flags. My wife was shocked when we left the house and still saw my huge backpack 'o photo gear sitting in the corner.
"Your not bringing your camera?" she asked..."I'm shocked."
My thinking was I was going to challenge myself and only take my iPhone and use it and some trusty photo apps to capture our weekend of adventure (yeah, we are reeeeal adventurous folks). My goal was to get some images that I could make into a mini photo album or even create a photo canvas collage out of all the pics. I have to say, that with Instagram and Camera + and an iPhone...you can take some pretty amazing photos. Some basics still apply: composition, light, and timing. What you can come up makes it pretty exciting to take photos (this coming from a guy who has taken some many photos i have a callous on my right trigger finger).
I really can't wait to make some canvas prints out of some of these photos...and yes, you can make some pretty large photos on canvas prints from photos you took with your iPhone and Instagram. One quick tip before I show you some of the photos from our trip is if you are really into Instagram...take the photo with your normal iPhone camera. Then bring it into Instagram and make your edits. That way you still have your original photo which is much larger than what Instagram produces.
We have done some testing here and we have been able to enlarge a photo from Instagram and put it on a canvas print up to 24x24 without any quality loss. I think that is pretty cool to think you can have a gallery of your own Instagram prints hanging in your house...I digress. Onto the photos from the Ballpark and Six Flags. By the way...it was hot...why we picked the 2 days of 104 degree high temps to make our trip is beyond me. But we had a blast regardless of the temperature.