Through The Lens of iPhone

A lot of you would know I am in fact a very, very boring person, and it's mainly just because my life is basically just eat, sleep, study and friends. Luckily, I have been able to find a hobby to lighten up my boring life, and yes, it's PHOTOGRAPHY.

Just playing around with colour splash there.

The ferris wheel at South Bank.

This is probably the best you could do with an iPhone for night shoots.

 Light trails are so cool :)

Food photography.

I only fell in love with photography about a year ago or two. Before that, photography was just about taking photos at a special event like a party, ball or whatever, for the purpose of capturing that moment and evoke emotions and memories. It was the objects/subjects in the photograph that was important, not really the quality of the image at all. Like those high school ball photos...because the venues were always dark so the photos taken were complete fail, now looking back at it :(

I remember it was this photo that inspired me to learn photography.

It's a night view of the Mt Cootha look out - it lets you see just how beautiful Brisbane is at night time :) It's just from Google image and I dunno who the photographer is, sorry. 

The first time I saw this photo, I was truly astounded. How can shooting under low light be done so beautifully? Whichever camera it was, it sees a better world than my eyes do. Just the quality of the photo - stunningly beautiful, and calm. Then I started wondering if I could take photos like this as well.

The other day my brother was telling me off for even thinking of getting a DSLR.

Outsiders just do not understand that quality shots can only be done by DSLRs' offer to a physcially much larger sensor, changeable shutter time, wide array of lenses for close-up, mid, long, wide-angle shots, shallower depth of field, superior low-light performance, autofocus, richer colour reproduction, image pixels of like 20megapixels and more etc etc.  Night shots become a piece of cake apparently, if you are familiar with the shutter speed, exposures, lightning and taking advantages of surrounding objects because these often help compensate the light and create amazing output.

But you wouldn't go on top of mountains every night and take photos there. When it comes to photos of everyday life, like if I want to take photos of family, friends, food, or even selfies, things like depth of field becomes important. Being able to position the objects/ subjects at the right place on the grid, as well as fiddling around with surrounding objects all become important, as the ones I took for these macarons and Mina the Maltese. These features make ALL the difference between a crappy photo and a good photo.

I really wish I had a better camera with higher resolution zzz.

 Pets are extremely tricky to take as they move so much! This was a lucky shot of my friend's dog - snapped just at the right time.

Ever since DSLR came into my life I got really picky with photos people take. I do not like people taking crappy photos (might as well not take them :S). This is what I called a crappy photo when compared to the one above; it's the same night look out at Mt Cootha.

Albeit DSLR is an important tool, a decent one is just too costly for me :( So now I'm just practising my positioning of things so everything looks right and nicely positioned for attention-grabbing, comfortable-viewing purposes. iPhones are only 8 megapixels which is like a 2 or even 3-fold reduction in pixel size compared to DSLRs. Sigh. All hobbies cost I guess. And photography is definitely an expensive one. I have now a full page of apps all related to photography, or the so-called 'iPhoneography apps'. It shows how much I love photography haha :)

I just love photography now because it allows me to create art from reality.

Yes, I still take photos because I want to capture moments that would otherwise just blend into all the other moments that have passed. The capturing of the moment encapsulates a moment in time, forever frozen though real life moves on and forgets. Photography allows me to freeze time in a way and be able to look back at it over time, reliving those moments in memory. Our memory is flawed, but the evidence of pixels is hard to deny. They might not be as clear or all-encompassing as actually being there back in that moment, but sometimes just a nostalgic reminder is good enough.

I am so glad to have come to appreciate photography as a truly amazing technology as well as the valuable part for chronicling my own life. Cameras have certainly helped me to revolutionise the way I see my world and my surroundings and I am going to share this world of mine not through words, but the photographs I snapped through the lens of an iPhone (for now), right here. :)