What do you get when cross a Mercedes car with a Mercedes Walsall Mobile Library lorry? A nice big scratch over one of my wheel hubs. Fortunately no one was hurt, nor was the car undrivable but it was bloody annoying. I really don’t know why the driver of the library lorry thought he could get through the gap but there we go. Well as they say, whomever they are? Could be worse.
Talking of worse this image was taken in one of the finest national parks in Britain, Pembrokeshire Coast, a really wonderful place to visit. Unfortunately it is also home to some of the largest oil and gas refineries in Europe at Milford Haven and you do get this incongruous contrast. Fraking Hell indeed.
So how do you think like a man in the middle to late iron age in England? It is not easy and I found myself standing a field near to Normanton le Heath doing just that. Actually that is not true because I have no idea, no one really does despite what they might say, has the first clue as to what would be going through a person’s mind over 2000 years ago. We really have no terms of reference apart from one – our own human interaction with the world around us.
So why was I trying to thing like this? Well as you may not be aware my field of research is prehistoric salt roads running through west Leicestershire and so I’m trying to work out the routes taken. A lot of the time there are clues, such as salt place names or perhaps salt related pottery as has been found at Normanton le Heath. However as I look east from the site the next salt place name is 37 Km to the east – just how did the salters get from Normanton to there? The first question would be how do you overcome Bardon Hill? Now this isn’t a particularly large hill but it is there and do you go over or around? Well my guess is around. So the next question is do you go to the left or right?
Well if you look at the photo you’ll see that the land is higher to left rather than the right which is consequentially the way I think the salt road went. Also by going to the right there is more water, an important thing if you have a train of pack ponies to look after.
So that is how you think like an Iron Age man – by not pretending you know what he would be thinking but rather trying to address obvious questions that the landscape might pose. Of course when I get home I start to plot all these things onto different maps which is what I’ve been doing this afternoon. Busy old time all in all.
Welcome to the dpreview.com Absolute Beginner’s Guides! If you’re completely new to photography, looking to upgrade from a point-and-shoot or the camera on your phone or are just looking for some simple tips we’re here to help. We’re hoping to produce these video guides regularly on a wide range of subjects, from buying advice to basic photo techniques to creative tips and tricks. Our first video covers the significant differences between an entry level digital SLR and a smartphone when shooting challenging subjects and lighting conditions.
Absolute Beginner’s Guides: Smartphone versus Digital SLR
Jordan and Mark pit smartphone against entry-level DSLR in a variety of challenging situations
The top three winners of the Photographer of the Year category each received an iPad Mini while the top entry from each category won a gold bar. Missed this year’s competition? The iPhone Photography Awards are already accepting entries for next year.
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By starwolfy (57 min ago)
This kind of smartphone rubbish trend is so hilarious.
Yes any good photographer could succeed to produce a great image with any gear.
What I dislike is all this kind of “rebel” trend where people just shoot with smartphone to show the world they are so good they don’t need anything more.
Then you hear all the wow and waw and people starting to say: I’ll try to use my smartphone more !
If everyone is following the same trend, then it not being rebel anymore.
If some people are serious about photography why they use a smartphone is beyond me. What do they want to prove ? I don’t mean they cannot produce the goods with a smartphone but I guess there are plenty better small cameras out there for a small, light and discreet package.
Maybe they like to hide behind the “tourist like” feeling this grants…then they need some more balls maybe.
This pics are great, but it doesn’t teach more than the usual photoshop and auto effects. There are tons pics like that on Getty and Flickr.
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By ManuelVilardeMacedo (1 hour ago)
Proof that, when you have the talent, anything will do. Some of those pictures are excellent by any standards.
That said let’s not get overexcited about the iPhone’s image quality. There are obvious highlight issues in some of the pictures shown and an overall lack of definition that Instagram does disguise but not eliminate. Besides, one can’t stop wondering how much further a dedicated camera would have pushed these iPhonographers’ creativity.
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By Dames01 (5 hours ago)
Nice set of pictures. In the end some people have talent and others do not. It does matter what camera you have with you…
Nevertheless, under some lighting conditions as well as for certain types of composition, a camera phone will not be up to scratch.
Comment edited 5 minutes after posting
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By Decoboy (1 hour ago)
Agree some great compositions, but it does matter what ‘tool’ you use.
Ignoring that this WAS a phone contest, why would any one DELIBERATELY use an inferior tool? Why use a blunt chisel if you know you might need a sharp one – too lazy to sharpen it?
Everyone of these glaringly show the limitations of very low end sensor/lens/processing.
This deluge of phone vendor marketing is dumbing people down – they want us to believe photography is only about convenience, let’s ignore the noise, crummy focus, non existent shadow detail, blown highlights, inconsistent colour, distortion……lets all pretend that because someone with talent can use these tools they will magically turn one’s narcissistic dreams into reality – with no real effort of course.
Much of the great technical advantages from the digital age are being sacrificed purely on the alter of convenience – most of these images would have come out just as good with a 70 year old box brownie – or a tiny film camera.
Comment edited 4 minutes after posting
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By rurikw (6 hours ago)
Very inspiring. I certainly will use my iPhone camera on midsummer holidays and try to SEE. The last winner must be in the wrong category. Those guys don’t look like travellers. They probably work there every day. Or maybe it’s a typo: should be travail, not travel. Great pic though.
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By Sean65 (8 hours ago)
I gather Holly Wesley must be a very good friend of the the judging panel. What a load of rubbish.
I’m really quiet sure there exists somewhere iPhone photos that are a hundred times better than this lot.
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By AussieBarb (8 hours ago)
I looked at the winning pics and then opened my camera pics (Samsung BTW) and thought to myself …. mine look pretty darn good compared to these. Then I read the comments and now I feel vindicated. Just very ordinary and totally underwhelming.
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By Sam Carriere (12 hours ago)
Gee, just imagine what these people might have accomplished if they had been using cameras.
By agentul (8 hours ago)
just imagine how we would just care about the pictures if no one had made a big deal that they were taken using iphones. this is just like telling someone “you are such a great professional, even though you’re a different race than i am”.
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By Decoboy (1 hour ago)
eopix – not true – every one has such glaringly poor IQ that they would be significantly improved if the the same person used a better tool – one worthy of their talents.
agentul – I would care – because we are encouraging people to remain ignorant about an important part of photography – get the best shot you can first – not the easiest, and don’t be lazy, if you have the talent, invest in a bit of extra effort (inconvenience ) to maximise the results.
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By lap777 (13 hours ago)
1st place surely got his butt kicked by the horse after setting of a flash in its eye, so he deserved at least a prize 😉
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By ingram98ab (13 hours ago)
butt kicked by the horse?? i tought it was a selfie taken by the horse itself!!!
By UCSB (14 hours ago)
1st place … this is a joke … right???
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By agentul (8 hours ago)
no, it’s a photobomb by the horse.
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By CeleryBeats (14 hours ago)
I’m generally a postivie guy and don’t like to be negative. But while some of those are excellent with a great composition and originality, three or four of those images are a joke to be winning. Compared to the others at least!
The flower, lifestyle shots are very nice. Architecture and photographer of year 2nd place are nice as well. Don’t care for the rest tbh.
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By klopus (19 hours ago)
I dunno why the first image was considered tops. Composition isn’t all that original and visually I think it’s overdone with that harsh, flat and mundane Instagram filter look. Last image also to me is spoiled by the obvious smartphone camera look though to a lesser extent.
Other images, especially St.Petersburg in winter and Indian Holi festival, are much better. They are simply good, not iPhone/mobile/etc. good, but in general great. That unless you want to print them exhibition quality 🙂
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By Johnsonj (20 hours ago)
These images are awesome. Love the iPhone imaging look. The best camera is the one that’s with you. Every day, more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera.
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By RobCMad (17 hours ago)
We know who you work for.
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By agentul (8 hours ago)
@Johnsonj
and every day more people are involved in car accidents than meaningful conversations on the internet. what’s your point?
Comment edited 26 seconds after posting
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By Decoboy (2 hours ago)
Nonsense – I’m sick and tired of this fortune cookie quote “the best camera is the one that is with you”, Only if you didn’t know you needed one – i.e. if you knew you were going to take a shot why would you take an inferior tool? To show how trendy you are? Oops I blurted out the secret reason many people buy things.
IMO most of these show fine composition, such a shame that the IQ is so atrocious in every one that it borders on pathetic.
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By Anepo (1 day ago)
How the hell did the second image from the bottom win an award? Its garbage the third from the top is also crap
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By eopix (23 hours ago)
You mean the snowstorm? I love that. It’s not about resolution or camera stuff, rather about feeling. I think the composition is great too.
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By RobCMad (17 hours ago)
I agree, I like the woman seen through snow picture.
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By vadims (17 hours ago)
I guess Anepo meant third from the top in the strip (the hangar), and I have to agree it’s… well, not too impressive. Second from the bottom could only get there by mistake (like somebody clicked on wrong file while uploading 🙂
Others are very nice though.
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By GaryJP (15 hours ago)
I think the third picture from the top (if you mean the snow) is superb. There goes that varying mileage for you.
Comment edited 23 seconds after posting
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By Nigel Wilkins (8 hours ago)
The snow picture should’ve won IMHO
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By Felix E Klee (5 hours ago)
@eopix No snow storm, I guess it’s shot through a snow covered car (?) window. Anyway, great image.
The second from the bottom I perceived as an illusion: When I first viewed it on a phone’s small screen (!), I thought it depicts a piece of jewelry. Only on my laptop I realized that it’s a snow covered swing. As such, I enjoy it.
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By jcmarfilph (1 day ago)
Seriously? Credit goes to overdone filters and PP to mask mediocrity of these images.
By LensBeginner (19 hours ago)
Maybe he has a smartphone, not an iToy…
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By PredatorsPrey (8 hours ago)
That’s how it is nowadays. Even photos that look more like photo manipulations are nowadays winning photo contests. I mean it’s a photo contest, not a photo manipulation contest but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
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By Decoboy (1 hour ago)
Agree, and BTW the rules specifically state that no desktop PP can be done – what a joke, does anyone believe lots of these weren’t tortured outside the phone?
How would you check it? And did they bother to check any of the finalists? Oh I forgot this is more about propagating the myth of convenience over quality, and selling more ‘camera’s that are worse than digital P&S from 10 years ago.
Phone cameras record only limited exif data, and this can easily be swapped back to the original data with quite a few exif tools.
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By sir_bazz (1 day ago)
Some of these images are very, very good.
Just reiterates to me that there’s so much more to producing good images beyond the size of the sensor thats being used.
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By howardroark (20 hours ago)
If you set up a hundred different cameras on tripods in front of the most gorgeous image the world has to offer and then walk away guess which camera will produce the best image. None, since none of them took a picture. Opportunity, skill, equipment all are required to interact together to get a photograph. A better photographer with a better camera might be able to get significantly better images from the same scene thanks to skill and equipment. However, if a good photographer is in the right place at the right time with a lousy camera the image can still be great.
Comment edited 2 times, last edit 2 minutes after posting
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By Johnsonj (20 hours ago)
So true, sir_bazz. So true.
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By Decoboy (1 hour ago)
More fortune cookie statements – I’m sure Ansel Adams would have agreed with you – that’s why he lugged that huge land camera around instead of a box brownie right?
BTW can you point me to ANY images from the all time heroes of photography taken with the lowest quality tool available?
Picture of the day
The featured image of the day in the #JJ Daily Forum from @joshjohnson comes from Instagram user @fotomakerdennis. Today’s theme is Three Of A Kind. Yesterday’s theme, Orange, garnered over 8,000 submissions. Join in with your Instagram account.
One of the joys of trying to get published is that you have to produce illustrations that are clear and precisie … which is what I’ve spent most of this morning doing. I don’t know what this says about me but I find the need for precision somewhat rewarding in itself. I estimate that by the time I have finished putting the paper together I might have to make around 18 – 20 such illustrations – Fun Fun Fun!
Clip clip clop went the April showers…so went the words of the Disney song. However it is mid June and we are still having rain clipping on the roof of the conservatory. However, if it wasn’t for the rain we wouldn’t have the verdant country in which we live, nor for that matter the green and wonderful garden. So be careful for what you wish for…at least it’s not cold, by English standards at least.
You know one of those ideas, the sort that seemed such a great thing at the time, well here is one coming back to bite. A couple of months ago my good wife and I went to Compton Verny for the day of high culture. We had a great time and my wife, as is her want, picked up the seed cones from under some of the Giant Redwood trees in the grounds of the country house.
When we got back home it was soon discovered that there were actually seeds in the cones and some one came up with the idea of planting them out to see what happens. Well nature happened and so far we have three small seedlings popping their heads above the soil. Should these seedlings ever come to maturity then they will turn into the largest living things on the planet. However, if that were to happen then I and probably many of generations after me, will be long gone. It does feel a little like Jack and the beanstalk at the moment – to think that such huge trees can grow from such slender things – it just makes you want to go out and hug a tree.
So any one want a tree???
One of the problems when you are researching the landscape is that you can very easily follows paths that lead nowhere. Today was one of those days. I spent most of the day in the south Lincolnshire fens looking at saltways and all things salt. Threekingham is the key to my research in this area because when the fens were, well, fens this was the last piece village of any substance before descending into the fens when travelling to Boston. Today it is just another small village bypassed but then it was the gateway to hell. Over selling it a little I know but the fens must have seemed very unsafe even when using a well used roads and tracks.
Threekingham church is a really impressive building. Even more impressive is the spire which I thought was added much later than the medieval period but it seems I was wrong. Indeed the only other tall building you can see with the naked eye from the fens is the Boston Stump and it may be that this was deliberate – signs of safety whilst crossing the fens or this is just whimsy on my part? Probably.
After Threekingham and the old fair ground at Stowe I made my way home via Melton. On the way over I had noticed a distinctive hollow in a field and I thought I would examine this one the way home – it was a nice day so there was no rush I thought. Bad move. As I was driving home it rained and rained but this being summer the rain didn’t last for long. So by the time I got to the field the sun was out so what would be better than a walk across the fields. Nothing apart from the fact that one of the field was filled with half grown wheat which have wonderfully full leaves, capable of capturing an awful lot of water. Needless to say by the time I had crossed the field I was saturated. Still the feature really worth it, well at least if you are a landscape archaeologist which I sort of am, otherwise it was just a dip in a hill and nothing to write home about. The dip was caused by many thousands of people walking across the field for hundreds of years and is known as a hollow way.
Now there was only problem with this and all the time as a walked across the field it was lurking at the back of my mind. Great hollow way but is it in the right place for my purposes? As I was in the field I couldn’t say but I duly examined the feature and then made a hasty retreat as more rain was on the way – this time taking a slightly less damp way back – only slightly. I got back to the car, wiped myself down and drove home through the rain and hail, don’t you just love the english summer! Well I have now had a chance to sit down and look at the maps at home and my doubts were legitimate – the hollow way was in the wrong place or at least for my current understanding of the situation. More work required me thinks.
Oh one final thing. Using the iPhone to capture images for research is really great. All the images are geotagged as you go along and so you don’t have to work out where you were when you captured the image. Now other smartphones do this but I work with the iPhone so I can only talk about the iPhone.
It has been one of those up and down days. The art class didn’t go too well – we all have those kind of days which left me feeling some what dejected. On the other hand the digital painting of Claire Underwood from House of Cards is coming on really well. This leads me back to a recurring theme – just how valid is the work I’m creating using the computer?
It is clear that many painters just don’t get it and dismiss it as ‘illustration’ as if this was a bad thing. They seem to have forgotten that many, if not all, of the great artists before the 20th century could be described as creating ‘illustrations’. I’m not claiming to have any vision or be the best at what I do it is just that I find great fulfilment in the work I’m doing.
It could also be described as ‘painting by numbers’ in that you work from a photograph and it is oh so easy match the RGB value for the pixels and before you know it you have made an exact copy of what you are using as your source material. Perhaps I might have been, to an extent, guilty of this at the start but I to believe that I have moved away from this so that the image is now all my creation, apart from the fact I’m painting a face and there is only so much you can do to this before you loose the likeness. I think what I do is valid and is an art form even if others don’t.
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