As we entered the new millennium, the internet and digital space exploded. Films cameras were replaced by digital cameras. And over the next few years, everyone was holding smartphones fitted with fairly descent camera as a standard feature. This lead to a revolution in photography world. Photography became accessible and relatively. People who would have never tried their hand in amateur photography, started liking and clicking the pictures. Social media has a great impact in our lives today. It has changed the way we think and even our shopping habits. People are clicking pictures and instant sharing them through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. Smartphone photography is enjoyable thanks to the ease of use and auto mode which gives you fairly good quality pictures. Add those filters from Instagram or from your favorite app and the image gets a nice makeover. Most of these editing apps are free to use. The instant gratification seeing pictures as you click gives you a high. And if you are not happy with the composition, go and click another one.
As a
wedding photographer, I travel all over for covering all sorts of cultural weddings. One thing which is common in all weddings, is guests taking wedding pictures with their phones. As professional photographer at such an event, it does spoil my compositions with one odd hand with phone coming into the frame. Sometimes few enthusiastic go little over board to and would frequently come in my way to get their favorite composition. So it does hinder my work sometimes. The bride and groom now realize this problem and are requesting to guest on their invite to just enjoy the wedding without using their cameras. On the other hand there are couples who are sending invites from new age wedding apps to share all the images through wedding app. This allows them to share the wedding images on smartphones privately. All those wedding websites are being taken over by wedding apps.
Smartphone photography has grown in leaps and bounds in last 5 years. People are always online and are sharing images instantly. Many are upgrading themselves from phone photography and are buying digital cameras. Smartphone cameras generally works decently in day light but struggles in quality if you are shooting in the night. The sensors in smartphones does not match with the regular digital cameras. But this aspect of technology is also rapidly changing.
Smartphone cameras biggest advantage is the size and ease of use. But they have generally fixed wide lens which limits your photography options. For example you are going to miss those favorite bokeh effects when you compare with DSLR photographers. But this limitation help you improve your composition skills. You understand and accept the limitations of phone photography. Stretch your creative mind and you can get satisfying photography results. There are quite a few people including professional photographers taking phone photography very seriously. Last year, ace photographer
Raghu Rai launched a book with photographs clicked only with mobile. Smartphone provides the ease of anywhere photography. Just flip your phone and your phone turns into camera. Once you start shooting regularly with phones. It becomes an addiction sorts. Its a great tool to save those precious memories. Going through those pictures , a few years later is quite a fun. Those smiles on your face are precious when you are flipping through your pictures.
