When I fly, I tend to get a an aisle seat. I’m not always sure why, because my head and arms are regularly hit with nary a tinge of guilt on the part of those striking me.
However, I might want to start rethinking that.
When I replaced my old cell phone from the Dark Ages (it was a flip phone with no keyboard…) with a new smartphone, I chose the camera first, and then the phone. I wanted a Windows phone so I could manage this site in Internet Explorer, so that somewhat narrowed my choices, but they weren’t bad choices. I ended up with the Lumia Icon, which has a 20mp camera, and also produces a RAW image in .dng format. It takes phone photography to a new level that I won’t get into here, because this isn’t about a phone or a camera – it’s about a snapshot in time memorialized in bytes.
More importantly, the Icon gives me the opportunity to capture some fantastic images without having to carry a camera with me all of the time.
Here’s a shot from a window seat in the back of a Southwest Boeing 737. We’re heading east over Huntington Beach at sunset. As we turned east, I noticed the sunset and thought “there might be a picture here…”
You can see ships waiting to get in to Long Beach Harbor in silhouette from the setting sun, you can see the waves headed towards the beach, the blue sky and darkness separated by the rain clouds. There’s a lot going on here.
This is the jpeg file straight from the camera. I haven’t played around with the dng file to what I might be able to do with it. I didn’t have time to go to manual and select the settings as I would try to do for a sunset – so I metered off of the clouds above the sun and hoped for the best. ISO 64, f2.8, 1/1250 second – all set by the Icon’s camera.
I ended up with a quality image of something fresh and different, and that’s what makes time behind the camera meaningful.
Shoot often and shoot well!
