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Richardson Shoots Scotland With iPhone 5s
8 October 2013
National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson challenged himself to shoot with Scotland with only an iPhone 5s in Capturing the Aura of the Scottish Highlands With the iPhone 5s. It wasn't always easy.
New cameras are supposed to unlock photographic possibilities. New vistas are supposed to open up before us, the images flowing like water, creation itself swirling all around us. Then reality sets in.
While his iPhone led him "around by the nose," he gradually learned to take "the pictures the camera can do well." Shooting 4,000 images in four days, he found, "The color and exposures are amazingly good, the HDR exposure feature does a stunningly good job in touch situations, the panorama feature is nothing short of amazing." But what he liked best was that it shoots square images natively (a feature of iOS 7 enjoyed by other iOS devices).
A set of Richardson's Instagram images appears in Capturing the Aura of the Scottish Highlands With the iPhone 5s. As he put it:
What surprised me most was that the pictures did not look like compromises. They didn't look like I was having to settle for second best because it was a mobile phone. They just looked good. Nothing visually profound is being produced here, I would have to say. But it feels good, and I even noticed some of the folks on our tour putting big digital cameras aside once in a while and pulling out their cell phones when they just wanted to make a nice picture.
In the comments section, a few folks are not shy about pointing out the technical flaws in the images. But when hasn't that been a problem? The real story is what Richardson did manage to capture. As Richardson replied to one person, "Sometimes it pays to lighten up a bit, to explore, to play, to re-imagine, to see where the images will take you."
If nothing else, you might think of it as a photographer's sketchbook.