xperia phone photobook.compressed

8/10/2019 Xperia Phone Photobook.compressed

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Cats, Dogs, Flowers and Landscapes with a PhoneCamera: a professional photographer shows you

his best photos

Julin

Monge-Njera


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TRO

PINATURE


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Copy right 201 4 by Julin Monge-Njera Published by Tr opinatu re Press, San Jos, Costa Rica

Design J.Monge-N.

Monge-Njera, Julin, 1 96 0-Cats, Dogs, Flowers and Landscapes with a Phone Camer a: a professional photographer shows you h is best photos.95 pages, 24x 20 cm ISBN 9968-9867 -0X-4 and Blur b ISBN

1 . Photography Cell phone cam era. 2. Photogr aphy Cellcell phone. 3. Photography Coronado Costa Rica. 4.Photogra phy Pets, flowers and lan dscape.


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delighted with the idea of having to workwith their limitations and not having to

carry my expensive and bulky DSLRaround. For the subject, I chose my current"natural" habitat: my home and the areathat surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, apatchwork of cattle grassland, agriculturallandscape and tiny forest remains inCentral Costa Rica. Cats, dogs, flowers,insects, landscapes and a few other subjectsin the weeks following my decision. These

images are not as the phone producedthem: I used software to sharpen a bitnearly all images and for cropping, light andcolor correction.

An old advertisement said that you do notexpect to play better with a moreexpensive piano, and extended theargument to cameras. There was some

truth in it: the ad had several identicalphotos and asked the reader to identifywhich was taken with a very expensivecamera and which with an affordable one. Icould not tell. In the case of cell phonecameras, they now have large sensors (12megapixels in my Xperia) but normallypoor optics. Nevertheless, y ou can still takeexcellent photographs with a phone and

obtain better results than I did when I hadmy Yashica with the best Fuji, Ilford orKodak 35 mm film. I think this book is

proof of my argument. The deeply colored andtextured flower close-ups that I include here seem

to me better than the close-ups that myprofessional camera renders with its zoom lens.

I thank my family and friends for supporting myphotographic projects.

Julin Monge-NjeraCascajal de Coronado, San JosCosta Rica, May 2014


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CATS


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There were no cats around w hen I made this ima ge, one ofmy favorites with a phone, but certainly cats would havelov ed the trout t hat t his Coronado farm boy is carry ing sohappily. The ima ge rem inds me of Norm an Rockwell'spaintings for th e Saturday Ev ening Post.


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The parallel of the two arms attracted me immediately. The cat even seemed to bereaching for the scissors!The image of the right convinced me that I could obtain beautiful photographs with aphone camera. The black stool and nearly black stone floor tiles nicely highlighted herwhiskers.


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Negrito, our black male cat, tells a lot with his expression. Sweet Godzilla, on the other hand, easily fools youwith her placid face. Nevertheless, she earned her name by leaving behind a trail of broken things. Theunobtrusive phone camera allowed me to get close enough for these portraits.


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The small lens of the phone camera, and the weak flash that usually comes with it, are excellent for closeups thatust a few years ago were impossible with most cameras. The results appear a bit abstract to me and hint of the

enormous complexity of any cat.


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One day I heard unusual calls among our pets and found this scene when I came to investigate.

Cats, among the smallest of felines (Siberian tigers are 50 times heavier), are still hunters at heart. Like theirancestors, they are fascinated by small mammals, birds and insects, all natural prey to them.Right image: Churro, our smart but shy black and white female. Normally only my son can approach her:taking this photograph was particularly difficult.


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DOGS


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Tifn, our male German shepherd, is the ideal pet. Fiercely protective of the family, yet invariably obedient whenwe call him. I got this detail of his eye without any difficulty. Light colored Ginger, on the other hand, is a friskyhalf breed Golden Retriever that we adopted when her original owner decided that he could no longer keep her.She is a beauty, but she still needs a lot of education and I had to lure her with food to get this photograph.


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A close-up of our dear mongrelAmberon a sunny day, ideal light for a camera phone that can record every hairdespite not being mounted on a tripod.Right: this dog was sitting in the garden of a small rural restaurant the specializes in trout. To get so close Isquatted, looked away and tried to point the phone in the right direction. That way the dog attempted to see whatI was watching and did not run away. Of course, I shot several times and only later checked if I had gotten anyacceptable image: this is the one I liked.


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I love this image of Tifnand Ginger: she seems to be quite aware of the power of old Tifn's tattered teeth.Right: not a studio photograph, just proof of the wonderful technology that cell phones are. Model: Gingeragain.


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FLOWERSAND INSECTS


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Small lenses let you take macro photography with good depth of field. Here the phone camera was moresatisfactory than my professional camera and I could get very close (to be fair, my professional camera does nothave a specialized macro lens and macro photography is not my field of expertise). The trick here is to wait fornice light and to avoid the windy times of the day. Wind will result in blurry photographs. As far as I canremember, I did not use any flash for these flowers.


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While the bi-colored flower on the left has the simplicity of some modern art, the one on the right is full of colorand I was particularly interested in recording the delicate water droplets. Both images are from overcast days andwith natural light. The phone was hand-held but I recommend a tripod if you want to seriously do macro

photography with a phone or, in fact, with any camera.


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These images speak by themselves!


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Originally I was attracted by how the back light defined the leaf venation on the left photograph. Then I noticedthe firefly, a beetle that uses light to attract and select mates. The right image is not from Coronado, I saw thistiny island of a plant in a sea of gravel in the highlands of Central Costa Rica and only had the phone with me.


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This might be a fly just warming up in the early morning sun, or a male fly guarding a leaf that serves as matingterritory. I did not stay long enough to find out but was surprised that a phone camera could record such detailin a tiny scenery. The beautiful flowery fence on the right is also from the highlands, I saw it close to a coffeeshop and having no other camera with me, tried theXperia. This fence reminds me of rural fences in Russia.


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PLANTS


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These ferns could have been reproduced in black and white for emphasis: I wanted to contrast an image that getsits strength from color and one that gets it from texture. The potted plant was in front of a red roof tin in a ruralroadside restaurant. The ferns grow outside our home's dining room and the photograph corresponds to the lateafternoon when the sun starts to descend on the horizon; that sunshine tint is the reason why I did not convert it

to black and white.


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Two very contrasting types of thorns, yet both are there for protection. Just imagine you could not run away in aworld full of huge animals that ate ... yes, you! That is the world of plants and their herbivores. We can only beglad that plants cannot think (I hope we are right about that!).


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De caying leaves become fragmented and the biochemical components return to the soi l, including Carbon

that is so important in global warming. The sandy rubble near a small construction site (right) also becomes

fragmented but we normally do not notice it. It is easy to place a phone camera at ground level to discover

these tiny landscapes of unexpected b eauty and complexity. Another advantage to take note of.


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A tiny prairie of lichens grows on old wood. Lichens are part of two very different worlds: plants (algae) andfungi. They probably were among the first beings to conquer the land. Ferns, like lichens, are ancient and suffervery little herbivory: they have chemical defenses that are far more successful than those of modern plants.


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Unlike in page 38, here I reduced the color in one of the plant images for a better contrast. Your eyes are morelikely to notice the protective hairs and the spider silk when there is no distraction from color.


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Both the horsetails (Equisetaceae, left) and the ferns belong to ancient plant lineages. They were very old whenthe first dinosaur was born, a fact that never fails to fascinate me: if I were I dinosaur, I could have seenpractically these very same things close to the Triassic and Jurassic grounds.


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I wondered if this fallen flower could still distinguished in black and white. Now I know.The image on the right corresponds to the place where I photographed the dog of page 21. You can let the kids

fish their own rainbow trout and have it professionally prepared for lunch. I felt sorry for the trouts so soon I gotback inside and made myself busy with the vase of fresh flowers.


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Two very different treatments of similar images. Monochromy can produce a more nostalgic impression, but I

recommend you always shoot in color to make black and white (or tinted) versions in post-processing. Comparethem and make your decision when you feel that color adds nothing to the image.


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An internal garden in our home: very early in the day the sun illuminated this plant from behind, showing thedelicate tissues. I moved the camera around until I had a dark background to highlight the effect.

Just outside the very same room where I photographed the potted plant, the deep red inflorescence of theGunnera insignis, a giant tropical plant, looks very different in a foggy Coronado morning.


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Plant "hairs" may have a variety of functions, like water equilibrium, protection from ice and wind, andavoidance of herbivores large and small. Some even have chemicals that cause severe allergies in mammals.These are harmless: I touched them.


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VARIEDSCENES


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I photographed the hillsides of Poas Volcano while looking for harvestmen that a Panamanian friend needed for

his zoological research. The image on the right is a view of the Bay of Panama. I took it on an overcast day justbefore a small storm hit the coast. This is also among my favorite phone photographs ever.


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The Coronado fields after a short rain. Everything is moist and the loaded atmosphere softens the landscape, yetthere are still nice colors to frame the distant volcanic range.The black and white photograph of an old wall makes a nice contrast thanks to its crisp details of wood fibersand paint layers.


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Hummingbirds move too rapidly for phone cameras, specially on an overcast day like this near Cerro Linda Vista,Costa Rica. Yet I find this image beautiful. The dazzling colors of hummingbirds were lost in this photograph,but colors greatly enhance these dwellings in the Casco Antiguoof Panama. In black and white this place couldlook poor and sad, but the color gives a more realistic view of the mood I experienced there.


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When I saw these photographs I felt that they belonged together but ignored why. One is sunny and colorful, theother dark and with reduced color. Now I think I felt they were related because of their conspicuous leading lines.Left: hillsides of Pos Volcano in Costa Rica. The coast is the Bay of Panama and if you look carefully you can seethe Bridge of the Americas in the distance.


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A painted seahorse sculpture in the middle of a dairy farm in Coronado, and colorful reflections in a collectionvehicle (a Packard in the 2014 Automobile Show, San Jos, Costa Rica). It is hard to see how a sea horse belongsin a highland farm or how the Packard relates to a seahorse, so I am passing the problem to you!


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LANDSCAPES


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The neo-Gothic style church of San Isidro de Coronado was built in the 1930s.I was driving home one day and noticed the beautiful but unusual dry season illumination, parked and reachedfor my phone. That is the idea with a telephone camera: it is there when you need it.On another, less sunny day, I saw this foggy scene less than 2 km from the church. Who would have thought

that it was the same area!


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Coronado is still occupied by active dairy farms but properties are increasingly being sold for housing projects andI think it is only the foggy weather than saves it from being fully, and sadly, urbanized. This photographs weretaken on different days but only a few hundred meters apart.


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The soft sunshine in the left can make some people pick up their boots and go out for a walk, while the dreamylandscape on the right may invite others to meditation with a warm mug of chocolate (both: Coronado).


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This two landscapes are only 1 km apart but land relief exposes them to different winds: the trees on the left haveless water available for their development and thus look different from those on the moist side of the hill.


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A tree from a distance can look very different from a tree used to frame a landscape. Whenever I can I try tofollow this advice: always take at least three very different views of each subject.


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Even a ragged farm complex can look more attractive to some people than the tall buildings of a modern city. Ipressed the phone camera to my hotel window to obtain these two views of the city when the so called "bluehour" approached.


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Another one of my favorite phone photographs. I was driving home and passed by the San Pedro de Coronadoschool. Unlike their peers in New York and other cities, those from the San Pedro school see this pastoral scenethrough their windows (lucky children!). The cows were coming towards the fence on the side of the road, thelight was perfect and the phone was in my pocket. I held the phone again the car window for a sharper image.The photograph on the right makes a good contrast because in it the cows are not a central element, yet theimage gains a lot by having them on top of the hill.


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GOOD BYE

What are my conclusions from the Xperiaexperiment?

and in the case of phone cameras, I would trythe Galaxy S 4 Zoom, which is said to solve thetwo main problems of phone cameras: it cantake real telephoto images and it works in lowlight thanks to its back side illuminated sensor.


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The first question you could ask me if I willabandon my professional camera, which by theway I did not identify. I have aNikon, but athome we also have CanonandSonyprofessionalcameras, and if I could I would buy the wonderfulOlympusOM or aSigmaas well. All of themproduce magnificent photographs and cost afraction of what you would have to pay for aLeicaor aHasselblad. Now to the question: my answer

is no. I still plan to carry my professional camerafor photographs that I consider very importantbecause even if the number of megapixels issimilar (16 megapixels in myNikon) I know thateven if the light is poor or the action fast I can stillget acceptable photographs. But for the rest ofthe time, my answer isyes: I will always use myphone camera when an unexpected opportunityknocks.

Maybe in the future phone cameras will be asgood as a professional DSLR camera from today.In Ridley Scott'sBlade Runneryou see aphotograph with astonishing detail, an idea takenfarther in Masaaki Taniguchi's Time Traveler,where you can see internal cell organelles in aphotograph of a plant. Until that time comes, Iwill be more than glad with the excellent camerasthat we already have in the early 21st. Century,

This is not a book about how to take betterphotographs with your cell phone. It is notadvertised as so, but if you read the descriptionsand examine the photographs you may learnthe basic tricks. These include taking fulladvantage of the phone camera'scharacteristics: you can put it in hard to reachplaces that are off limits to professionalcameras; they take v ery good macro images,

they are there when unexpected scenes appearand they are unobtrusive and mostly ignored bypeople, pets and insects. Furthermore, in theworst case scenario, when light is poor and youcannot increase it, you can take silhouettes ornice blurs (like I did with the hummingbirds forthis book). Of course, if you liked my results andwant to improve y our own work, y ou can do likeBenjamin Franklin did when he wanted to learn

how to write: he read the best authors availableto him and tried to copy their style story bystory (do not believe me? read hisautobiography).

This book is a personal project (originally calledThe Xperia Experience) and I had a great timedoing it. A disclaimer: a few photographs in thisbook are not from my Xperiabut from an older

Nokiaphone (for example, the cows in thepenultimate photograph). But most are from

those weeks of phone camera work.

I hope that you enjoyed reading the text andlooking at the photographs: I wrote the book Iwould have liked to read. In the future I couldmake others on landscapes, portraits and art


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make others on landscapes, portraits and art

nudes, for example. Anyway I will follow thisformula of doing what I enjoy, just for fun, andthen sharing it with you, for double fun. Untilthen, thanks and good bye.

Julin


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About t he auth or

Julin Monge-Njera is a Costa Rican ecologist, scientific editor,educator and photographer born in 1960.For many years he has acted as scientific adviser for the BBC and theNational Geographic Society. He was Regional Editor of the UnitedNations' Global Environmental Outlook ("GEO Report") and has been
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"On April 2014 I decided to give up my professional camera to exclusively use the simplercamera in my Xperia cell phone for a few weeks.I was delighted with the idea of having to work with their limitations and not having tocarry my expensive and bulky DSLR around. For the subject, I chose my current "natural"habitat: my home and the area that surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, a patchwork ofcattle grassland, agricultural landscape and tiny forest remains in Central Costa Rica.Flowers, insects, cattle, people, pets and other scenes would all come under the attentionof my Xperia cell phone camera in the weeks following my decision.Here are the results."

( p )

a researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, theNational Museum of Costa Rica, the University of Costa Rica and theDistance Education University of Costa Rica. He has also done researchas part of teams with the USDA (USA), Uppsala University (Sweden),University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Nanjing Institute ofGeology and Paleontology (China). He is Curator of the Encyclopedia ofLife (USA) and Team Member of the IUCN Red List of ThreatenedSpecies (Switzerland).He is author of more than 200 scientific articles and of 20 books

published by several Costa Rican universities and Oxford University.
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"On April 2014 I decided to give up my professional camera to exclusively use the simplercamera in my cell phone for a few weeks.I was delighted with the idea of having to work with their limitations and not having tocarry my expensive and bulky DSLR around. For the subject, I chose my current "natural"

habitat: my home and the area that surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, a patchwork ofcattle grassland, agricultural landscape and tiny forest remains in Central Costa Rica.Flowers, insects, cattle, people, pets and other scenes would all come under the attention ofmy phone camera in the weeks following my decision.Here are the results."
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