iPhone Photo of the Day

I've had an iPhone for almost 11 months now. I really like it as a phone (mainly due to AT&T having a lot better coverage in Monterey than my previous cell carrier Sprint did), and I use it as my music player.

When I first got it, I was rather disappointed in the camera - it's fixed focus, fixed focal length and hard to control for exposure. However, as Apple are prone to advertise, they have an app for that!

In the end the camera has turned out to be a lot of fun because of its limitations and because there are cool iPhone apps to play with its photos.

So, since the end of June, I've been taking photos with the phone, playing with them on the phone (using the iPhone CameraBag app, you can turn them into black and white, over saturate them and a bunch of other cool effects) and posting them to Facebook (from the phone). The whole point is that I take, play and post photos in the field. It's fun 'cos half the time, you can't really see what the photo turned out like 'cos you're trying to look at it on the phone screen in sunlight, but occasionally you get lucky with a nice photo.

I've had some good responses on Facebook for some of the photos, so here's a few I've posted since late June that I either got a good response for or I just like.

Despite this post's title, I haven't posted one a day, but typically one or two a week.

What Happened To The Condor Photos??!?

Someone (yes, it was you Paul) mentioned today that they hadn't seen any Condor updates on the blog in a while. I realized I'd posted a few photos on Facebook, but none on here recently.

Since visiting the Grand Canyon, I've only been looking for Condors once (in part 'cos the Ducati went into the dealer for new tires and has been there for almost three weeks now as they discovered a crack in a fork leg and they're having to get the new part from Sweden - so much for fancy Ohlin suspension eh!).

Well, that's not strictly true, I did go with Pete and Ali to check out a Condor release at Pinnacles, but as we're the best part of a mile away from the release site, good photos were hard to come by, but seeing a Condor take its first real flight was great!

Back to the "normal" Condor spotting, this one occasion turned out to be a great one. I've been lucky and have gotten lots of shots of Condors over the last year or so, but no really good close ups of a bird on the ground.

This trip changed that as a Condor landed close to the road - I was about half a mile away from where it landed, but jumped in the car and drove around to where it landed. There was already someone else there - I told the person that we really needed to shoo it away for its own good, but we spent a minute or so taking photos before we shoo'd it away.

During that short time, another Condor landed too, so we shot that one too - then the shooing began and the birds left - the less familiar they get with humans, the better.

Anyway, here are a couple of photos from October 3rd. These two shots are pretty much not cropped, so if I were so inclined, could easily print them out at 20"x30". Not sure anyone would want a print that size on their wall, but you never know!