Barcelona with an iPhone

My husband and I were lucky enough to travel to Barcelona, Spain in early June.  And I don’t use the word “lucky” lightly- my husband won the grand prize in a raffle at a golf tournament earlier this year- which was a chunk of money to go anywhere we wanted to travel!  I about fell over when I heard this.  We are planners and take awhile to make big decision; not exactly the risk-taking, lucky kind of people.  So we fully embraced this opportunity, booked our kids at two Grandparent camps, and flew to Spain for 7 days.

I was a bit weary about leaving my children for a total of 10 days (travel time and all), but I was thrilled to be able to travel and have that time with my husband over our 13th wedding anniversary.  I knew the kids were in good hands and in all honestly, it felt wonderful to just have to care for myself for a little while and nurture my relationship.  

When we travel, my hubby and I love to simply wander and explore the areas of the city where the locals go. But we knew the city had so much to offer, so we did a bit of it all. We toured Gaudi’s works- Park Guell, Sagrada Familia, and Casa Battlo;

kayaked the Costa Brava, visited Montserrat;

ate tapas and drank Sangria; ate and drank our way through Mercado de la Boqueria; spent an evening soaking in the salt baths at Aire;

rented a Vespa and drove up Mt. Tibidabo and along the beach; and wandered the Gothic Quarter, Born area, and Old Town.

I hemmed and hawed over what cameras to bring.  I knew that I didn’t want to carry my Canon because I wanted to bring a smaller bag and not worry about my shoulders hurting.  So I decided upon my Fuji x100v- it’s a mighty little camera and serves me well most of the time.  After a few days of carrying the camera around, I realized that what I really wanted to do was play and experiment, but also not have any extra weight in my bag. 

Sooooo, I ended up using my iPhone 13pro for 90% of the photos that I took.  Granted, I could have spent more time street shooting, but I really wanted to relax and enjoy my time.

Our mobile devices are quite powerful and often serve for most of the photos people take! Let’s talk to iPhone tips to help you on your next trip.

One feature I love to use on my iPhone when traveling and photographing buildings, is the Live Shooting mode.  I generally turn Live off.  But when you use it, there is a drop down where you can make the photo a “long exposure”.  This will blur anything that is moving in the photo.  I love how I can use this feature to photograph a still scene and not have the distraction of those people moving around it.  It’s also fantastic if you stand perfectly still and have someone take the photo- because it will blur the people around you and you will stand out in the crowd.  I also used this when there was a moving object that would create blur- like here, the ferris wheel blur creates a lot of fun color to the scene.

I also edit on my phone- most often using Apple’s built in features. I start with the magic button and adjust from there. The built in filters are also fantastic.

There are two apps that I primarily used- Moment and VSCO.  One of the things about my iPhone that drives me bananas is that when you take a photo, their software automatically makes adjustments to it- they sharpen it and sometimes change the colors.  I really want the photo to look like what I saw on the screen.  Two ways to fix that- shoot ProRAW (but your file sizes are then huge and you have to edit them) OR shoot in a different app.  I use Moment for that- I can manually adjust settings and play with the camera like I would my DSLRs.  It doesn’t shoot bursts or take video, but it’s good to use for a straight forward photo.  

VSCO allows me to apply a prism filter to the photo or, what I used it mostly for, take double exposures.  I’m not a master of these and on the phone, you have less control than a DSLR, but it’s fun to play with!

As we were heading into the airport, I saw this tiny note on the ground and just thought it very fitting.

I would love to hear about your adventures! Where should we go next?