Sony Arouje

I am passionate about photography and ended up buying a Nikon DSLR back in 2007. Since then I am in love with photography. A year or two ago I stopped taking photos. It’s not because I lost the passion, It’s because my responsibilities held me back from roaming around with my camera. I wanted to spend time with my son than in street or in woods.

I saw a lot of opportunities to capture in my daily life but difficult to carry my SLR every where especially to work. One device always handy is my mobile but I never used it, because I had an iPhone 3G. The camera quality is pathetic and I never took any photo in that.

Recently I switched to Lumia 920 and started experimenting with the camera. I would say Lumia 920 has an awesome camera. It’s low light capturing ability is wonderful. After a couple of days with Lumia 920 I realized that the opportunities in mobile photography is endless. I decided to explore the potentials of mobile photography that I explored with my DSLR.

I always love street photography but I am reluctant to go to street. One reason is, I am very shy to go to public holding my camera. Another reason is the subject will always be tensed in front of the big black DSLR camera. This will reduce the chance of capturing the right mood that I intended. I also need to face the questionable look of onlookers. When I replace the DSLR with my mobile, I become very comfortable. No one notice me, my subjects are more relaxed and I get the mood what I intended. You all will be seeing the result of my mobile street photography in coming days.

I love taking portraits, there is a lot of portraits in my collection. One thing that applies to both street and portrait photography is, the subject should be relaxed. You will never get a good portrait from a tensed subject unless you are shooting a rock. Getting a good photo of my son is very difficult. He will try to pose for the shoot when ever I take the camera to take a shot. I like to capture the mood, when some one pose for a shot, I think the photo will loose the mood. Using a mobile as a camera, my son will never notice it or wont feel so much tensed.

One thing I really enjoyed is Nature photography. In nature photography I don’t need to care about whether the subject is tensed or relaxed. No one bothers when taking a photo of a flower or river. I tried couple of nature shots using Lumia 920. All shots came very good.

Lumia 920 have a fixed 2.0 aperture, that left me the option of playing only with exposure. Combining with right technique and tools, I can able to take good looking photos. One of the hurdle for me in mobile photography was how to know the amount of light as there is no light metering. I couldn’t find that answer yet. To overcome this situation before taking the shot, I will decide the area of interest. I will tap that area in the screen, so that the camera will calculate the desired exposure for that particular area. For e.g. if I want to take a silhouette, I will tap the brightest part of the scene. So the camera will adjust the exposure for the bright part and underexpose the subject.

Post processing is one of the crucial part of photography. One of the advantage of mobile photography is, I can process the photos in the mobile and upload it from any where. I don’t need to get back home to process my image. Windows phone store has some good photo processing apps, see the summary section for more details.

Summary

I moved to mobile photography doesn’t mean I won’t touch my DSLR again. My Nikon is still a big part of my life. It’s impossible to replace a DSLR with any fixed lens, fixed aperture device. In DSLR I have freedom to choose the aperture, I decide the exposure, I can change lens, I am in total control.

So where will I fit mobile photography? in my daily life, the place I feel difficult to carry my SLR. As you read this far then you might be interested in mobile photography and you might be curious to know my tools.  In my previous posts I explained about the Camera apps and Post processing apps I am using in my Lumia 920. You might be also interested to see some of the photos taken using Lumia 920, have a look at my tumblr page.

Happy clicking…