Photography

November — A Year in Photographs — Night by Adrian Galli

Night 20 — Day 324

Photography is, elementally, capturing light. Night is generally the lack thereof so finding light is a challenge. High ISO, wide apertures, long shutters make a challenging situation harder.

Building on prior months of People, Light and Shadow, and Long Exposure, it came naturally to make Night and November about bringing several ideas together.

While other months have been about styles and inspiration I’ve drawn on before, November I found a new and exciting style I’d had not ever photographed. I usually prefer sharp subjects, “proper” exposure, and other technical details being refined. In this instance, I embraced motion blur of the people in the photographs—sometimes ghostly and eerie additions to what would have been rather average scenes.

 
A camera alone only captures light. Through skillful manipulation does that light become cinematography.
— Adrian’s Life Rule #69
 

These average scenes became unique—places one has seen or past by a thousand time are an altered reality, frozen in time. I would contend that such a philosophy is one of the creative fundamentals of photography—to make the unremarkable, remarkable.

October — A Year in Photographs — Perspective by Adrian Galli

Illinois Center — Day 286

After nine months of photography, I found myself uncertain what theme to pursue but settled on perspective. It is an important yet broad topic in photography and thus I focused on a few perspectives on ‘perspective’—vanishing point, two-point perspective, and “look up”.

Oddly, it became a bit of a challenge. For such staple in photography, or perhaps because it is a staple, it was hard to find something new every day that both spoke to the ideals of perspective while including interesting subject matter.

Reflecting on the month, I can not give myself a “grade” for my work. Some photos I really love and some not. That isn’t really any different than any photography but compared to other months, I sometimes felt stagnant. On the other hand, some photographs I was indifferent too became follower favorites and others, that I did really like, got little adulation.

 
The best part about creativity is that under no circumstances must you follow the rules.
— Adrian’s Life Rule #17
 

In the end, October took me to through Italy and Chicago and the challenges were important to explore. I do not ascribe failure to the month because it help me understand myself as a photographer better but ‘inspired’ was also not a deep sentiment for the photographs to created.

When I’ve told some I was feel a bit uninspired, they seemed shocked. I would love to hear some of your thoughts on this month. What stands out?

Annual iPhone Photowalk — iPhone 15 Pro by Adrian Galli

Those who know me have seen my iPhone photowalks every year since iPhone 5. While some might argue each iPhone is merely a “minor upgrade” from year to year, I beg to differ. Every year I find new and incredible changes to the camera in iPhone. Some years are bigger than others—one that comes to mind is iPhone 6.

iPhone 6 had such a great change in the quality of the camera, I still measure output of mobile device camera’s against it. Perhaps it was the lens, or the sensor, or a combination of both. Perhaps iOS and those hardware features serendipitously made for an outstanding union. Either way, iPhone 6, iPhone X, iPhone 12 Pro, were devices with cameras that stood out to me.

Grasshopper Portrait

No, Grasshopper Portrait is not from this year’s iPhone 15 Pro, or last year’s iPhone, or that of the year before. Grasshopper Portrait is from iPhone 6—approaching nine years ago on a “measly” 8 megapixel camera. No special processing, no AI generating-whatever, no machine learning super resolution—just a good camera (and a good photographer, I like to think).

 
A camera alone only captures light. Through skillful manipulation does that light become cinematography.
— Adrian’s Life Rule #69
 

There is no denying that technology has evolved since then. iPhone 15 Pro is no different in its evolution but with new lenses, new sensors, new processing, I’ve rarely been as impressed with what I’ve been able to achieve with a mobile device camera as with iPhone 15 Pro.

This isn’t a review or a sales pitch, but a sampling of photos I have created using my iPhone 15 Pro over the past few weeks. From Chicago to Italy, I’ll let the image stand on their own.

Italy: Lucca, Bologna, Firenze

Chicago, USA