Behind The Frame 06

Me and my fiancée were heading home after a lovely beach day when, through a small gap in the bushes, I noticed this man slowly walking towards his towel. I quickly snatched my iPhone out of my pocket and took the shot. It didn’t feel like anything special at the time, but later, while skimming through my shots in the edit, I completely fell in love with it. Maybe it’s the street-photography feel, maybe the way the light hits from the front, I honestly can’t say. All I know is that it’s become one of my favorite shots I’ve ever taken with my iPhone.

Funny enough, I would’ve missed it entirely if I wasn’t shooting with my phone, another reminder of why it’s worth mastering the gear you actually carry with you at all times. If you want a head start, check out this article I recently posted.

As mentioned above, this shot stands out a bit from my usual style because the lighting is more frontal. The setting sun still creates a beautiful contrast ratio, but the light hitting from the front gives the frame a more documentary feel. It’s not normally my go-to setup, but for this shot, it just works and I absolutely love the result.

The bush with the white flowers hanging down created the perfect natural frame for this image. The wooden railing added a nice touch too, though the composition would’ve worked beautifully even without it.
It gives you the feeling of peeking through a frame into another life, one of my favorite approaches to composition.
If you’d like to learn more about different composition styles and their effects, check out this article.

As always I recorded in Apple Log for best dynamic range and editing possibilities. It demands a certain level of color grading skills but it’s definitely worth the effort!

After importing the clip into my timeline, I always start by applying my LUT to get a quick feel of the exposure, white balance, and overall saturation. From there, I fine-tune each setting until everything feels balanced and natural. Most of the time, I like to add a touch of cooler tones to the shadows and warmer tones to the highlights, I kept that quite subtle in this shot.

I added one mask as a vignette to subtly draw the viewer’s attention toward the center of the frame, and a second mask with a slight Gaussian blur to bring back a bit of depth, something that’s always tricky to achieve on an iPhone. That’s really it for this one, simple, quick, and effective!

Most of the tracks and sound effects I use are from Musicbed. Their quality and variety are unmatched, and their AI search tool honestly saves me hours of scrolling through libraries.

If you want to try it out yourself, you can sign up below for a 14-day free trial. My personal playlist is live too, so you’ll be able to scroll through some of my favorite tracks!

Exact camera settings from the Blackmagic Camera app

Thanks so much for being here, I genuinely appreciate every single reader.
If you ever have questions or ideas for future issues, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram!

Until next time,

Stefan

Minimal tools. Maximum creativity.