I may have said before that I’m an ‘opportunistic’ photographer.

It seems a rare event for me to go out with the sole intention of taking photos, rather that I take them when out and about and something attracts my attention. My last post featured the excitement of a ride to the local waste dump that ended up in woodland at sunset. This one features an equally less than thrilling trip to Boots, B&Q and Sainsbury’s in December – well, insofar as that was the shopping trip that we were on. However, emerging from the store into the late afternoon twilight revealed a blood red sky, fast disappearing. A snap decision in the car diverted us down to the Hessle Foreshore and the area of the Humber Bridge north bank and a quick dash outside with the iPhone as the light and colours faded.

Mobile phone cameras do quite well these days coping with low light but the better shots require a tripod and some apps and faux-slow-shutter captures to minimise excessive noise. They need to be captured in raw format too to allow subsequent extraction of detail and correction. The light was already going and there was no time to extract the tripod and set it up, just a case of grab some shots and hope for the best, with the intention that the recovery work could be done in the Digital Darkroom. I say ‘grab’ but that did involve attempting to hold the phone firm against a rock, a bench and a concrete post to allow for some slow captures. That meant that images would be wonky but that could easily be corrected in post-processing, along with the noise in the images that was inevitable.

A tree silhouette always fascinates me
The blood red sky had gone but there remained plenty of colour

‘Look the other way’ is automatic to me. Many times I have seen people snapping away at the obvious subject give me a weird look, or to be precise, a look that says ‘you’re weird mate’ because I turn 180º to check the view. In this case, looking away from the Bridge toward Hull, the moon was rising and the sky colour had bled over to the East, giving a lovely image.

Using the standard wide lens

Moving down the Foreshore beyond the bridge I was able to capture some slow-shutter shots by thrusting the phone against a concrete post for steadiness.

Using the telephoto lens
Using the Ultra Wide Lens

To be fair, some of these would not stand scrutiny at higher resolution. Conditions, my poor settings, my rushed efforts and iPhone limitations in this now very low light made it hard work in post-processing. But these ones are good enough for showing digitally. Hope you liked them.

Happy New Year to all – and if I have a resolution at all, then it would be to post more frequently. On past record… we shall see.

All images taken with the iPhone 13 Pro using either the native camera, Lightroom, Halide or Slow Shutter apps. Developed using Topaz Noise Reduction and Lightroom Classic.