🎵It’s getting to feel a lot like Christmas…. 🎶

Well, a bit. You have to maintain a positive spin on it – which is exactly the right attitude because we need to suppress the woes, forget the politics, and if we have been fortunate enough to escape the worst of it so far then switch off the news, raise a beverage of choice and smile.

I was smiling a couple of weeks back when I was inspired to head down to the River Humber at Brough Haven to take some evening shots. It was certainly cold but the sky, whilst not spectacular, did provide some pleasant shots worth capturing. What am I saying? It was spectacular, sometimes the spectacular intense sunsets can be a bit too much, subtlety is often better.

an evening at Brough Haven

Taking photos with the Fuji and the iPhone

One of the reasons was to test the iPhone 12 Pro Max in this kind of lighting situation. Of course, I couldn’t resist taking a ‘proper’ camera as well. To be fair, you will be unlikely to say which is which because the image size and amount of compression on digital platforms is massive so the quality difference can be lost.

Taking the sun itself usually leads to massive blow out of highlights but here we can just about get away with it despite using the iPhone. Ultra wide angle lens.
Using the iPhone telephoto
This is actually may favourite image due to the subtle lighting that I was able to extract from the raw data on the Fuji. It may not show as well on this site but I have it as a screensaver on my 5K screen iMac.
Another taken with the Fuji but developed with a lower exposure.
Back to the iPhone as the sun now edges behind the cloud
Same shot with the iPhone zoom lens

This was a cold but peaceful evening, flocks of Canada geese flying overhead (but not in shot). The whole vista of the river was too much to capture in one photo, a panorama was called for. I have used the panorama facility on the iPhone before but it is usually in desperation as the results are often poor with hard to correct and unnatural distortions. Instead I used my preferred method of taking a series of images and then blending them in Photoshop which gives a much more detailed and accurate view.

Multi shot panoramas don’t have to be the sole province of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras…
Another multi shot panorama blend.
Taken with the Fuji this image was developed in Lightroom via the Nik Collection.
Taken on the iPhone in raw and developed via Lightroom.

The light and colour in the sky was disappearing fast now as ‘blue hour’ ended and blue finger ends started. I had enough raw material to go home and play with and experiment and compare.

While packing up I was fascinated by the cloud generated from Drax power station eighteen miles away and grabbed this shot which I felt might benefit from some cropping – not the best thing to do with shots from a mobile phone.

See below. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when enlarged but compressed on here it is passable.

Simple, pleasant images, right on the doorstep as it were. Why don’t I get out locally more often?

Make the very best of your Christmas. Best wishes.

Technical Notes for Nerds (like me)
Shots taken on iPhone 12 Pro Max in both native camera (HEIC) and Lightroom camera (DNG)
Also Fuji X-T2 with the XF 13-135 (RAF)
Developed in combinations of Lightroom Classic Desktop / Photoshop 2021 / Nik Collection

Aiming to experiment next with Apple Pro-Raw and the Halide app.