iPhone Workflow Tutorial: Mountain Reflection in a calm lake

iPhone Photography

Mar 23

Altaussee is a small village in the heart of Austria and a well-known spa town. You'll find breathtaking landscapes and a few lakes nearby. The most famous of these lakes ist the Altausseer See. With just 0.8 square miles, the Lake is rather small.

You'll find a hiking trail there that will allow you to hike around the Lake, and there's even a snack-bar about halfway of the trail.

While hiking the trail a few years ago, I got this photo, that I shot on an iPhone 7 Plus; it's the final edit.

Altaussee See shot on iPhone 7 Plus, edited with Touchretoouch and Lightroom Mobile

In this blog post, I'll share how I composed, shot, and edited this beautiful scene of the Lake with the Loser mountain in the background.

Photo Composition

When I saw this scene, I immediately noticed two things: The clouds above the mountain while the rest of the sky was cloud-free and the reflection of the mountain in the water.

First, I tried to compose this photo using the rule of thirds. But that didn't look right. A higher angle would have put the cloud reflection too close to the edge of the photo and would have added a dull blue sky to the rest.

Using a lower angle, the lakeshore would have been visible; and I wanted to avoid that. Now, given the perfect symmetry of the scene, I chose to capture that by merely putting the horizon in the middle of the frame breaking the well-known rule of thirds (And I don't feel guilty at all)

iPhone Camera App used for this photo

ProCamera App is one of my recommended iPhone camera apps and I also used to take this photo in RAW. And to capture the entire beauty of the scene, I used a Moment Wide Lens when I took this photo with my iPhone 7 Plus. Here's the unedited version:

If you'd like to know more about RAW and iPhone, here's a blog post about how to shoot RAW with iPhone.

iPhone Photo Editing Apps used for this photo

As you can see from the unedited photo, there were some branches in the foreground. Thanks to Touch Retouch App, one of my recommended iPhone photo editing apps, I could remove them in no time.

Removing Branches with Touch Retouch App

As I already knew I'd crop to the photo to square, I didn't care about the branches that would be outside of the frame. For the ones inside the frame, I used the quick repair brush in Touch Retouch on the iPad. This brush is intended for removing smaller objects from photos. So, just perfect for the branches.

Next, I imported the Photo in Adobe Lightroom Mobile. In the screenshot below, you'll see that I heavily used local adjustments for this photo.

Lightroom Mobile local adjustments used for this photo

Local adjustments are a premium feature in Lightroom that you'll only get when subscribing to Adobe Lightroom Mobile Premium. As I use local adjustments, and a few other premium features, quite a bit, subscribing to Lightroom Mobile was a no brainer for me.

So, let's go through all these adjustments. The first one is a local gradient adjustment for the foreground to darken the areas near the edges a bit and to create a gentle gradient from black to blue that guides the eye towards the mountain and the reflection.

Adding a gradient using local adjustment in Lightroom Mobile

With the next local adjustment, I increased the exposure of some areas of the background a bit and increased the contrast.

Adding contrast with a local adjustment in Lightroom Mobile

The small area I adjusted with the next local adjustment should be a bit darker. So I used it to bring down the exposure a bit.

Turning down exposure with a local adjustment in Lightroom Mobile

And the area to the right could use a bit more saturation.

Increasing saturation using a local adjustment in Lightroom Mobile

Lastly, I used a big local adjustment to add a bit more sharpness to the main subject of the frame, the mountain.

Applying sharpness using a local adjustment in Lightroom Mobile

Finally (for real this time), I made some minor adjustments to the overall image by increasing contrast, reducing highlights and whites, increasing vibrance, and applying a bit of clarity.

Any thoughts? Sound off in the comment area below or check all the other iPhone photography workflow tutorials I wrote. I've also a list of all the recommended iPhone photo apps and iPhone photo gear I rely on - regularly updated.