Point and Shoot

Isn't this a pretty photograph?  It's taken with an iPhone 6s camera, which has been my camera of choice this summer.   I saw these crab apples on a recent walk on the Bobolink Trail with That Handsome Dog Gus but the sun was so bright and my sunglasses were working so hard that when I looked at the screen I couldn't see anything except darkness.  I decided to take a chance and pushed the big white button anyway.  I was quite surprised later to see how good an image I got.

Here's another photo from that hike.  To take this I looked at the grasshopper and then held the iPhone up near it, touched the dark screen to set the focus, and pushed the button.  Again, because of my sunglasses and the bright sun, I couldn't see anything on the screen.   When I brought this image into PhotoShop I did crop it quite a bit but otherwise made no adjustments.

Amazing results from a true "point and shoot" camera.

This photo of Gus was taken on that same hike.  This time I could at least see Gus since he was so big and light colored.  I love how the camera caught the action of the water.  

You can see a similar action here  This was taken at our neighbor's party Saturday night out on their lovely deck.  We were surprised that Fetcher had apparently been invited as well!  He hadn't told us, but there he was socializing and having fun.  One of the children is shown here trying to stop the kitty from leaving.   This was cropped also, but otherwise no adjustments were made.   

 Another "point and shoot" of the party, showing one of the host's toys --the incredible pizza oven.  In both this and the above photo, I could see what I was shooting but had to shoot very quickly.  Again, the results come from the quality of the camera and not the photographer's skill.

Two photos from other recent hikes, showing off the camera's work.

This morning I was up on Flagstaff Mountain hiking and spotted turkey vultures hunkered down in two tall pines.  I've never seen them up there and had to try a shot or two even though I was looking straight into the sun.  Another case of shooting blindly with nothing but a dark screen in front of me.  And more amazing results, yes?

I couldn't resist messing around in Photoshop with these images to make them more like the scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's creep movie, The Birds.

This is my favorite.

I love snapshot photography and studied the rise of amateur photography and the development of hand-held film based cameras for my Masters in American Studies degree.  

When Kodak sold the first Brownie camera way back in 1900 the marketing slogan was "You push the button, we do the rest," which was a reference to the fact that users sent the entire camera into a lab which removed the film processed the negatives, and returned the reloaded camera and the printed photographs to the owner.  

 Images taken with Brownies are fun to look at but aren't of the quality and technical capabilities that we're used to nowadays.   When I'm using my iPhone 6s I feel like the "point and shoot" promise has been fully realized, and I love it.