Focos App for Wide Aperture Images

Ever since I joined the 52Frames weekly photo challenge last October, it’s kept me busy in a good way. I only have my iPhone as a camera and that brings a whole set of issues. I’m not really a photographer, but I love taking photos for this blog. Now I have an additional purpose to take photos with a specific topic in mind to address each week. Last week the challenge was “wide aperture.” Good luck. So I did a bit of research and found an app that could help me. It’s called Focos. Heaven knows I’m learning a lot of terminology and the paid app is actually a bit over my head. But I really enjoy tinkering with all aspects of this new hobby and I like the results. The free app actually does a beautiful job achieving the outcome of a blurred background - the kind of thing you get in portrait mode. I tested the app out on a few photos before taking it seriously with images from the American history museum. I used my grandson’s baseball photo and played around with the options. Pulling it in to the program makes the image even more interesting. You can change the lighting and do much more with fine level tuning. In the end the background or foreground becomes the clearer part of the photo. The results can be stunning and over exaggerated. I find myself using it a lot after first using another app called camera+ 2 to create vivid colors, but also slow shutter and so much more. I’m starting to get more interesting feedback on the photos that are submitted. I like the ones that can’t believe the photo was taken with an iPhone. I’m surprised myself.