The best camera is .... the one that's with you!This is the mantra has been used for years by photographers, it doesn't matter what kind of camera you use as long as you have an opportunity to capture that decisive moment. One might argue that it is just as, if not more, relevant today than it was 60 years ago. In fact, professional photographer Chase Jarvis has turned this saying into App for the Iphone but also published his own images in a book "The Best Camera Is The One That's With You: iPhone Photography by Chase Jarvis (Voices That Matter)", all of this spreading wildly amongst the internet and immediately achieving a love/hate grouping among photographers.
So what does this have to do with Halloween? Well my second favorite holiday is here, the weather is foul but the trick-o-treaters are still out in full force, and everyone seems to be in pretty good spirits. This is one holiday that embraces tradition, at the same time brings about new ways to chill people to the bone; the reflection is in the decorations, the costumes, the countless horror movies. Amazing scenes are everywhere you look, the leaves are perfectly framing the jack-o-lanterns, the fake corpses are patiently clawing out of neighbors lawns, make-shift graveyards have humorous inscriptions, and ghosts are blowing in the wind (even if they are sheets marked with magic marker and held together with rubber bands).
I tend to take these displays for granted, never did I have the thought to document them as a reflection of the neighborhood. Well the thought came to me a couple days before Halloween that I would take the time to just snap some of my favorite's this year... nothing flashy, nothing too horrifying, no just the spirit of the day keeping with old and new traditions. I was looking for effort, execution, but I was also looking for displays that spoke to me in some way whether it was humorous or scary.
The Iphone has proven to become an excellent tool for many photographers including myself, the ability to edit in-phone, the pleasing overall image quality (with a little boost), the use of excellent apps, and of course the convenience of almost always having it on your person has made it almost indispensable (as proven by Flickr's announcement that the Iphone is now the most commonly used camera by it's users). I have found my own comfort level in using the Iphone, have been very content with the images that I have produced, and found myself to purposely leave other cameras home because I do have the Iphone just in case.
This month the Iphone was my most frequent tool for documenting the various autumn scenes, it also gave me a chance on that inspired morning to walk around taking photos of the many Halloween decorations in neighboring areas. Not only is it a meditation on photography, but the use of an Iphone is a discipline onto it's own where you have to be very careful with your composition but also have complete freedom of concentrating on purely vision with no other worry about technical aspects of running the camera (it is truly a point and shoot).
As we move into the colder months, the moments change from the harvest colors to the muted browns and eventually the stark whites. People will be bundling up, soon will be bustling in anticipation of the holiday season and photographers will be giddy at all the photo-ops around the bend. The best camera for those moments will be ... well you know
Some straight Autumn Scenes:
