Photography itself is an art and I call it an art because it requires skill and creativity for a person to be good at it. Anybody can just take up a camera and take a couple of pictures but will it look good? When it comes to mobile phone photography, I would say I'm decent at it because back when I was in the university, I was one of the few people that my classmates loved to ask to take pictures of them. Some people suck at taking pictures, it's either the lighting isn't right or the camera angle is off or the person being photographed looks out of place in the picture.
Photography is more than just clicking a button, it's about framing moments and capturing emotions in the right way. A good photographer can use light, composition and perspective to tell a fantastic story that invokes emotion and a visually stunning. As for the visually stunning part, just leave that for DSLR cameras used by professional photographers. No smartphone even comes close to what some of those cameras can do (don't even mention iPhones). I have come across great photos taken by those cameras and let's just say I was visually stunned.
Of course, there are smartphones out there that can take stunning pictures that can rival some DSLR cameras, particularly the older ones but more modern DSLR cameras will blow your iPhone pictures out of the way. I used to love taking pictures a lot back in the day but these days, I have gotten bored of it and it's probably because I have seen photos that make my phone's camera feel like a camera from the early 2000s. My smartphone actually does take good pictures, as evident in the sunset photo below which I took 3 years ago.
You can see the sun peeking behind those buildings and if you look closely, you will notice a bird flying across the sky. When I noticed the beautiful scene, I just knew I had to capture the moment and it came out looking very beautiful in the end.
I took that photo the same day I bought my phone. I was still fascinated with the camera which was much better than my previous phone's camera. Another thing that a lot of people take for granted when taking photos is the background. A beautiful background makes your photos look a lot better.
You can have a good camera, the perfect lighting and a good photographer but the background (or backdrop) will ruin the entire photo. The good thing is that there are tools out there that can help you to improve the background of a photo and just generally make the whole photo a lot better. Most professional photographers that I know make use of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and even I have dabbled with Photoshop a couple of years ago when I learned photo editing. The picture below was a photo of my friend that I took and edited with Photoshop back in 2020. You can see the before and the after, which do you prefer?
I was still learning how to make this cool background using the pattern from the clothes the model is wearing (in this case, my friend) and I was still struggling with lighting and shadows but I will say I did a good job. That wasn't the original photo, hence why it isn't sharp. The original one was in my previous laptop that got stolen, this picture is just a copy. A lot of professional photographers (if not all) make use of Photoshop mostly for basic editing such as removing acne, adjusting brightness and saturation, improving saturation and also applying blur and bokeh effects when necessary.
Many people have various reasons why they take photographs. For some, it's their profession while for others like me, it's just a hobby. For others, it's a form of self-expression and a way for them to capture memories and store them in digital form. Sometimes, I wonder what's the point of storing these pictures on our phones when there is always the risk of losing them in one way or the other. Luckily, there are now things like cloud backups (Google, Microsoft and others) where we can store our precious memories on the internet for as long as we want. But, how many people even know about them?
Thanks for reading
This is my entry for April Inleo Prompt, day 18. Come be a part of these awesome daily prompts by clicking on this link.
Connect with me on:
Twitter: @kushyzeena
Readcash: @kushyzee