This one time in Japan

Remember when taking holiday photos was a mission? Like first you had to own a camera and if you wanted achieve any decent results you kinda needed to invest in an SLR with a couple of lenses. Then you had to invest in all the film you would need for the trip and then you needed to learn how to use the bloody thing - no small feat for the average person.

These days I travel a lot, not much international travel now that we all live in Covid prison, but anyway still plenty of travel. The fact that every smart phone now takes better images than any SLR camera I owned in times gone by means that I get to take as many photos as I like - unrestricted by the price of film and developing.

I found this video one day on Vimeo and it got me a little more interested in just what can be achieved with a smart phone and an extra few seconds to think about and frame the photo. What I also appreciate about this video is that it is 7 years old and the cameras that came bundled with your smart phone were not even close to what you get nowadays.

Carphone Wharehouse Smarter Story from leon willis on Vimeo.

These photos are from a trip to Japan I did with my girlfriend. I was experimenting with a new phone that I had just bought prior to the trip. I loved that it had these shallow focus settings so you could achieve a result much like shooting with a very fast lens on a DSLR (think 1.8) I find for smart phone photography the best results are achieved when shooting portraits - getting right in close to your subject and leaving the viewer with no choice but to see exactly what you want them to, and not left to wander around the picture trying to understand what you are telling them.

Wide shots work too but composition needs to followed more strictly to make sure the viewer understands immediately what you are giving them...

Another thing that is fun about smart phone photography is how easy it is to capture movement. You can whip out your phone and snap a photo easily from a moving car, on a bicycle or thru a train window. I love this photo because it captures movement and makes you feel immediately that you are inside a train carriage looking out to a world that is very obviously Japan.

Lastly is backgrounds. I love to shoot against any kind of plain wall that either matches or highlights what the subject is wearing.