A Storm, a Newspaper and a Moto g8 Plus

The opening image on my homepage, the one with the rain hanging out of a heavy sky over the paddocks, wasn't taken with a camera bag, a tripod or a plan. It was taken on a phone, from the driver's seat of my car.

It was a July afternoon in 2021 near Mount Taylor. It's a nice spot to sit, take some time out, eat lunch and look over the rolling hills, and that's what I was doing, parked up with the paper, when I looked up and saw the cloud base dropping towards the ground, with the rain falling out of it in a grey curtain. I had the phone, so I used the phone. Five frames over about seven seconds, though the rain kept falling like that for a few minutes before it broke up.

The phone was a Moto g8 plus, and I shot it in RAW and edited it in Lightroom Classic, the same as anything off the Canon. I'll say this for it: the RAW files from that phone were better than anything I've had from a newer phone since. I don't know why, and I'd be guessing if I tried to explain it. Otherwise there was nothing special about how I took it. It was a true point and shoot.

Zoom in to 100% and it starts to fall apart, as phone photos do. At normal viewing size it holds up really well.

The sky is what makes the picture, not the phone. What holds it together is the grass, gold in the light against all that grey. I cropped it to a wider frame and gave it a tweak in Lightroom, though I can't remember exactly what. I made a black and white version too, which I liked, but it lost the golden grass that balances the grey.

If your phone can shoot RAW, turn it on. I can't plan for light like that, and neither can anyone else. The best camera really is the one you have when you look up.

It's also the only photograph of mine I've bothered to print and frame. It's 16 by 10 inches and hangs in the spare room. That might say more about me than it does about the photograph.