My phone is the one item I cannot travel without. One of the main reasons why I take my phone everywhere is because I never want to miss an opportunity to take the perfect picture. As a photographer, I am constantly taking pictures and documenting moments; but sometimes it can be a hassle to carry my camera gear. Over the years and with the help of other photographers and bloggers, I have found 6 apps that I use almost everyday for my photography, especially when I am traveling.Here are my top 6 apps for travel photography:
CAPTURE
Camera
Use what your mama (or Apple) gave you! There are so many ways to use the camera app to its full potential and get amazing pictures. Simply try adjusting the exposure to improve the look of your image. Move closer to the object or person you are photographing instead of using zoom to preserve the quality of the image. Get creative with angles and lighting, and enable the grid feature to play with spacing. There is so much you can do without having to download anything extra!
Lightroom CC
Lightroom CC is the mobile version of Adobe's Lightroom. It allows you to capture, organize, edit, and share your images. Lightroom is one of my favorite apps because it can capture photographs in a RAW file format, an unprocessed file containing more information than the usual JPEG. RAW files provide greater flexibility when editing because of the large amount of information found in the file.
Plan
Planoly
Planoly is my favorite Instgram planning app! I have tried various apps to help me plan content and create a cohesive theme, but none of them compare to Planoly in my opinion. You can move pictures around, add captions, save hashtags, schedule posts, and it can even autopost certain images (they just have to fit the dimension criteria). This is perfect for travel because it does all of the work for you once you plan your posts so you can enjoy your vacation and share your adventures, just without the hassle!
Photo Pills
Recently, I discovered The Wandering Lens, a blog full of photography guides and resources. Photo Pills helps you plan your photo shoots through their location scouting tool. It informs you when golden hour, blue hour, sunrise/sunset, and other vital times are in your location. It even comes with long exposure and time-lapse calculators. The Wandering Lens points out this app has everything a photographer needs (Burns, 2018)! I think it is perfect when traveling to new locations because it allows you to plan and take advantage of the location.
Edit
VSCO
VSCO is probably my favorite and most used app on my phone. I have stayed true to VSCO for years and it fits all of my needs. This app is perfect for editing and sharing photos straight from your phone. They have a large variety of presets, most of which are made to look like film. It also comes with various tools so that you can be very creative with your shoots. This is especially perfect for people looking to edit cohesively for their Instagram theme.
Lightroom CC
Lightroom is not only great for capturing images, it also works to edit your images. Lightroom is more advanced than VSCO and has more tools to use, such as curves, selective, healing, color balance, and lens corrections. A great feature is the ability to access your presets from Lightroom on your computer, so you do not always have to worry about having your laptop. This is perfect for photographers, bloggers, etc. who create their own customs presets or have their desktop.
Save
Google Drive
Last but definitely not least, never forget to back your images! A few months ago, my hard drive failed and I had not been backing it up, even though everyone told me I should, and I ended up losing about two years worth of personal pictures and my school portfolio. Now I am constantly backing up my work on Google Drive and my new hard drive. This is especially important for those precious travel pictures! There are many great alternatives to Google Drive, such as Amazon Photos, Box, Dropbox, etc. so I recommend trying a few and find what works best for you!
These are just some of my favorite photography apps that I think are perfect when you're on-the-go! Please comment any of your favorite photography apps or if you tried any of these 6 apps.
ReferencesBurns, Lisa Michele. “The 6 Best Apps for Travel Photographers.” The Wandering Lens - Travel Photography Guides, 2 Mar. 2018, www.thewanderinglens.com/6-best-apps-travel-photographers/.
