I have actually found taking pictures to be therapeutic. Composing the shot. Getting the light right. Looking at shadows. Even if I never look at the picture itself at least beyond looking at it right after taking it to see how it looks, I think it relaxing and enjoyable. I joke with people sometimes that it wouldn’t matter if I had a memory card in the camera (or back in the old days film in the camera).
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When I was in high school, my brother and I converted a corner of our garage into a darkroom. Spending my time in it developing negatives and then into prints was one of my happiest times in those days. I even miss the smell of those chemicals used to developing films… Now one of my happiest times is spending time taking photos and developing them in the Lightroom.
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Had a new baby join our farm this morning. Rezzi came much later than expected. We assume his mama lost her original foal (due in June) and rebred while we were at FIL’s due to Covid since we kept our stallion with what we thought were bred mares to keep life easier for the farm sitter. Still, he’s here now and we’re enjoying him. It’s fun to watch them learn about the world around them.
He’s a bay colt with no noticeable white markings on him anywhere. Some future show pony owner is going to love not having to clean “white” prior to showing!
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Your new little foal is adorable! I agree that the future show pony owner will be happy not to have white to keep clean. D2’s medium pony hunter was a chestnut with a white blaze and a short white left hind sock. Lots of baby powder was used to keep him looking good in the show ring!
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Black socks don’t show the dirt (or grass stains) nearly as much!
(To the non equine folks, since he’s bay, once he sheds his baby coat he will have black socks on all four legs. Some also have white below where it’s black. He doesn’t appear to.)
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He’s such a cutie!
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Love bobcats; hate the screeching in the middle of the night 
we have a bunch of minks too
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Obviously not an amazing photo, but this was on my run this morning. This morning’s moon was huge, bright orange, and gorgeous. I often stop to take pictures on such mornings, but they look like this. (And this is one of the better ones!) I have an iPhone 11. So photo gurus, is there anything I can do to make them look better, or do I need a better camera?.
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This guy was a fun thing to come across on our way to trying a new park to explore. As for shots in the dark, the night mode on my iPhone does some interesting things when it’s set to the longest time. It shows as brighter even than real life, which is different than my old phone without night mode, which showed everything as darker and duller than it was in real life. In this (random) night pic I upped the vibrancy, but everything else is as it shot.
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I used to have an iPhone but changed to Samsung for a simple reason that the latter takes better quality photos and videos. That was, however, a few years back, so I don’t know about the later models of iPhone.
While the cell phones are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of quality photo and video features, they still have long ways to go for low light shooting like the one you posted. Low light shooting produces “noise” as the posted image evidences (not your fault). Also, due to slower shutter speed, any tiny shake in the hand will cause unsharp images. Combined both, the overall images take a big hit.
Short of purchasing an advanced mirrorless camera, just about the only thing you can do for a low light shooting situation is to:
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steady the phone, using a camera holder of some kind, if at all possible (hard to do when out jogging)
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shoot in HDR burst mode, that is, if your phone has that feature. This feature combines different dynamic range (bright moon to dark pavement), so it might produce a better image than a normal photo mode.
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also try shooting in pano mode even though your intention is not pano, if your phone doesn’t have the HDR feature.
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do post editing, using sharpening and noise reduction softwares. The ones that do a pretty good job are by Topaz (DeNoise, Sharpening, etc.).
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I understand your frustration with photo quality, but your photo is quite interesting.
Thank you for sharing.
I’ve given up trying to get full moon shots with my iPhone, even with my new 12 mini. The low light function gives me much better general night shots than my old 6S, but the moon is just too bright and the phone can’t adjust for that. This is about as good as I ever got (with the 6S).
It’s even hard with my digital camera (old Canon PowerShot). I have to put it on a tripod, do certain speed etc. settings which I don’t remember, and zoom in as tight as possible. Even then it rarely works but is exciting when it does:
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DO the AF lock on the iPhone and then use the slider to adjust the exposure slider.
I went to see if I could snap a pic of the moon, but it was totally clouded over. Snapped a pic of a passing car instead for funsies and love how it turned out, like the light was dancing.
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My H has that shirt. We find that those who understand it are people we enjoy the most!
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We saw the eclipse in person at Clemson - totally stunning and well worth the trip. Anyone else there?
We’re hoping to catch the 2024 version too, but that may be tougher since it’s in April and going over areas that tend to be more cloudy that time of year.