Office Reflections
by Sherm Edwards
I don’t consider myself a “cell phone photographer.” For example, I don’t currently have any photo apps on my iPhone 14 Pro. But, reviewing my camera roll, I see that I do take a fair number of pictures with it. Most fall in these general categories:
- Family event memories;
- “Wish you were here” digital postcard shots;
- Utilitarian shots, like photos of documents or prospective purchases;
- Shots when the DSLR isn’t up to the task, such as handheld low-light shots;
- Shots where I would have used my Canon mirrorless if I had it with me.
Here’s an example of one in the last category. I was at Artomatic in DC, in a multi-story office building. I happened to look out at a building across the street and saw a reflection I really wanted to capture. I set the phone to the right magnification and took a couple of shots. Months later, thinking about this year’s MPA competition, I air-dropped one of them to my desktop and imported it into Lightroom.
One reason I don’t love the iPhone as a camera is that I find framing shots harder than with a DSLR or mirrorless. Although I don’t get motion blur from pressing the shutter, it does often wind up changing the frame a bit. So, in Lightroom I cropped, straightened, and squared up as well as I could. I decided that the one shot actually worked better as two separate pics, shown here.
I’m reasonably pleased with the results. You might see one at an upcoming Competition Night.
Maybe an app or two wouldn’t hurt . . .
Blue Hour at the Washington Monument
By Tanya Riseman
We took a visiting foreign high school student on a twilight tour of the monuments in DC – a must see! The wind was intensely whipping around the Washington Monument. Even so, it was a warm, humid summer evening, full of other visitors and tourists zipping by on electric scooters. People lingered, admiring the view, playing with the flood lamps, and leaning into the wind. I loved how the phone did not try to “correct” the blue hour’s color which complements the yellow of the lit obelisque. No apologies for the poor light response of my old phone – any graininess or jpegginess is part of the shot’s grit.