summertime, and the photography ain't easy

I hate this time of year for many reasons.

I can’t take the hot weather any more being one.  And the fact that to take anything resembling a decent landscape image means getting up at 4am or staying up until 11pm; neither of which I van manage either these days is another.  Last week's star gazing being an exception obviously!

So, what does one do?

Well, to cheer myself up I bought my first new mobile phone in years: an Apple iPhone X.  My main reason for getting it was its superb camera, meaning I’d always have something on me should the need arise.

Image wise, aside from getting up early or staying up late there’s not much really.  There’s infra-red photography (I have a filter to enable that and I’ll share an image in the coming weeks), and there’s black and white.

This week I’ve chosen an image taken with my new phone camera in black and white.  I quite like it, and the fact that it was taken in the middle of a blisteringly hot, sunny day doesn’t matter.  

To me anyway. 

It’s a view of the southern Brecon Beacons taken from my favourite spot at Craig y Nos.  I applied a red filter in Photoshop (this darkens blue skies) to replicate the steps I would have taken were I shooting the scene on black and white film, along with a square crop  to give it a slightly retro look.

iPhone X

1/1000^thof a second at f1.8, ISO 20

handheld