Low[er]-Light Mobile Photography

I don’t know if all or any of these photos can be called low-light photos, but maybe. Anyroad, these are some recent low-light photos, all of which were taken via the camera on my iPhone 6. I think they turned out splendidly. Enjoy (if you are so inclined).

Downtown Olympia, WA (🌲🌊👍🏼). Taken four minutes before 7:00 AM, as @Monotharch and I, like vagrants, were milling about waiting for Oly Coffee Roasters to open.

The amazing Randy Stonehill (or Uncle Rand, as he’s known by his fans) performing at a church in Bellevue, WA. He actually customized the stage lighting mid-concert by communicating with the lights guy in the back of the auditorium. “Working on the ambiance” (say “ambiance” with a French accent; that’s how he said it). It was a good call, adding to the magic of the evening.

Actually, this one was taken by my dear wife, Abi, on my iPhone at the Science Center in Saint Louis, MO (🎺🍁♥️). I didn’t have my phone on me, because I was the one in the fighter plane simulator machine and barrel-rolling actually flipped the sim upside-down, requiring empty pockets. She took the photo for memory’s sake, but I think it has potential as a photographic piece, don’t you?

A great photo (at least for me) is almost always unplanned and unpredicted. Going into the creation of it, there may not be high expectations. But after the shutter drops and retreats, what emerges is something great, something unexpected. That’s how it was with this photo. A bathroom window in a little cottage in Port Townsend, WA. The foliage outside the window caught my attention. I grabbed my iPhone, aimed and shot — and was startled by what the little lens had picked up! The subtlety of the light bouncing off the faucet knobs and shower curtain — these were not things I was looking to capture, or was even interested in, but they make the photo.

The same story here as with the last photo: I shot with the intention of capturing the greenery outside the window. In the end, the window and what was beyond were just spotlights for the real show — the beauty of a shadowed room. Also, the lighting makes me think of a 1960s movie.

The above two photographs were made during a nightwalk through my Grandpa’s neighborhood in Sequim, WA. The latter is of a cross that hangs on a white-painted, two-story mansion. I heard that at one time, this house was Sequim’s only hospital, being the house of Sequim’s only doctor (mind-blowing, kinda?). I find it significant that the house which was once the town’s only hospital now displays, for all passers-by, a cross. A symbol of the death of Christ, the only soul-healing to be found in this sin-ravaged world.

BOOM. Shadow is cray-amay. Actually, I believe this one was shot on my iPod Touch 6th gen, which sports a camera comparable to that of the iPhone 6.

Took this two days ago at a pit stop (🚽) on our way to Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving. An old familiar grocery store in the sleepy highway town of Quilcene, WA, where my family lived when I was little.

This one might not be lowlight, but I wanted to include it. See my amazing $3 thrift store find?