Taking what many people have said and Chase Jarvis has made gospel to the photography community, the best camera is the one you have with you. The other evening in Forest Park here in St. Louis, my best camera was a BlackBerry. The fountain at the base of the World’s Fair Pavilion is a classic location in St. Louis for wedding parties, families and any tourist with a camera to stop and get an image.
On Friday, after the kids going to prom had left, there was a few minutes before the sun went down when there were very few people around and it was a great photo opportunity.
One trick I have found with the not so hot camera on my BlackBerry is that if I change the color setting to sepia or black & white, the resulting images are often much more interesting. With the tradition of the pavilion, the sepia look works pretty well. It removes the distracting color and lets the interesting structure be the focus. It can even work with Mia hiding in the tall grass.
Then at times, black and white together with a moving subject and a moving camera and a slower shutter speed can make for an interesting image.
Unfortunately, I have not found any apps for manipulating images in the BlackBerry, and as Frederick Van Johnson believes, “pixels were born to be punished.” That is very true of these images. The exposure, brightness, contrast, fill light, and black levels have all be manipulated in Lightroom. A vignette has also been added along with some grain to enhance the feel.
Here is before and after:
Or when to really have fun an image of a tree can be transformed.
Jennifer likes the before image better than the after image. I disagree. I don’t think she likes either of the tree images. What are your thoughts?
