An iPhone image from Boston’s Logan Airport, highlighting a cool reflection of the new international terminal’s brilliant red facade.
This iPhone Friday image might be a day late, but I felt it was worth sharing. One of the best features of our smartphones is that they ensure that we always have a camera with us, which nowadays is of pretty good quality.
Here’s what I noticed yesterday…
International Reflections
As I was waiting in the cellphone lot at Boston’s Logan Airport, I was looking at this reflection in front of me. The new international terminal is a brilliant red and looks amazing. I could help but be intrigued by the reflected baggage carts and then vehicles went by…
In 2023, I visited the Forbidden City, a breathtaking historical site in Beijing. A capture of local empresses in an anachronistic moment.
This week’s edition definitely falls under the heading of packing light on our travels. In 2023, I was lucky enough to meet with one of my work teams in Beijing, China. First of all, it was wonderful to spend the week with the team, as it was my first time to meet all of them in person. This also was my first time visiting China, making this a voyage of discovery and exploration.
One of the local managers was gracious enough to guide me through the Forbidden City. At that historic site I captured this shot…
Empresses
The entire, ancient Imperial City complex is a stunning location to visit; everywhere you turn, you can sense what might have taken place there. Many local visitors will dress up in the style of the dynasties and take their pictures.
What caught my eye in this particular moment was the anachronism of period costume and smartphones. It’s one of those little things that made me smile!
Of course I took lots of photos during my trip, so there will be opportunity to write some blog posts about the entire experience. I very much enjoyed my travels in China, even though I only got to see a small part.
Our smartphones are valuable tools for photography. Here we have a test shot taken with my iPhone that surprised me.
Our smartphones have become ubiquitous devices that both keep us on an electronic leash and enable us to do some pretty cool things (other than working every waking hour…). I mentioned before that I tend to use my iPhone to take some test shots to get a better sense of how I want to compose a certain image; of course, it also provides me the benefit of having the exact location where I’m shooting.
Sometimes I, and I suspect many of you, find out that such a test shot came out pretty well and is worth taking a second look at…
White Domes Loop Trail
This is one of those images; as I got a little lower with my iPhone to see how it looked from that angle this shot came about. Afterwards, I was really pleased with the way the iPhone captured both the texture and various colors with a rather nice sense of balance.
Oh, and I did take some shots with my ‘serious’ camera after setting up the tripod at about this level. They came out pretty good too!
A quick smartphone shot in Valley of Fire state park.
Taking a shot with our smart phones is a great tool to get a sense of what an image might look like from different heights and points of view; it’s a lot quicker than changing our tripods around and trying that 5-10 times. Also, the GPS data on our phones provides a marker that allows us to find exactly where we took that shot…
Valley of Fire’23
This was a quick up-res from an iPhone shot and some relighting playing with Topaz Photo AI, which I clearly still need to learn more about, as it increased the saturation by significantly more than I expected. Still it gives a good sense of the landscape in Valley of Fire state park in Nevada.
A quick view of Night Lights at New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill
During the post-covid years, my wife and I have made sure that we visit the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill during one of the highlights of their season: Night Lights! During the holiday season, the creative staff at Tower Hill does an amazing job in creating a lights display that is a feast for the senses.
Night Lights are a Feast for the Senses!
Artful approaches to lighting trees, shrubbery and placing a number of strategic gnomes to keep an eye on proceedings, they are everywhere. Colors show up in many locations and angles of lighting of the trees create for opportunities of both discovering new structure and seeing into arboreal soul…
Tree Sentience
Some of our visits in past years have been on evenings that were bitterly cold, and being atop Tower Hill was a challenge during those times; this year, the weather was perfect with only a light breeze and pleasant November temperature. Walking along the rainbow path was particularly stimulating and refreshing…
A Rainbow Path
A great big thank you to the staff at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill for creating yet another stunning display! I will share more photos in upcoming posts.
One additional note: this time around I took all the photos with my new iPhone 16 Pro Max. I set the camera to Raw Max mode and use the Night setting; this produces some spectacularly large files in DNG format, which are well worth the storage space, as I’m impressed with the quality produced. My edits were minimal with a little bit of sharpening and contrast/exposure adjustment. More experiments will follow!
