It seems that if you are passionate enough about something, life tends to get in the way.
I consider myself a photographer, an amateur in a lot of aspects, but what defines the word “photographer” anyways? If it is being passionate about pictorially documenting the world with an artistic eye, regardless of what life throws in your way, then yes I believe I am one. I mention this whole life getting in the way concept not to sound glass half empty, quite the opposite really. You see, taking photos is just one of many activities that fills my time. Unfortunately it is an activity that gets pushed into the cracks of a very full time management schedule. It fills in around large blocks of work, play, work, family, friends, and more work only to get squeezed out at random moments to capture something that I can’t ignore.
Limitations Another limitation I have is not wanting to risk damaging my expensive Sony DSLR while getting the shots that I know are unique and different simply because of how I get them!
Luckily for me, someone came up with this handy dandy invention called the iPhone. It is an affordable, portable, and useful tool for several different functions, which I love because it allows me to multitask! Usually, the only reason I pack it around on a daily basis is so that I can squeeze in some snap shots of the every day working life utilizing its relatively high quality camera. Sometimes it is nice to make a phone call off of every now and then. (insert winky emoji here)
Usually where I’m at in the middle of nowhere, (not complaining) service is a rare unicorn never to be found, banishing the iPhone to a life of airplane mode to save on battery life. With all its positive aspects, the one problem is that I must sacrifice the quality of using my larger more expensive camera in order to obtain the shots I do. One does not simply strap on their fifteen hundred dollar Canon EOS 7D Mark II to the back of their saddle and long trot 7 miles only to say
“sorry, I cant heel that calf for you… I wouldn’t want to damage my camera”. “Could you hold still and pose while I get a shot of you please? Can you move your horse a little to the right so I can get the mountains behind you??” “Oh, I think that calf is running out of air by the way… maybe you should give him some slack, thanks!”
So I do what I can with my handy dandy iPhone tucked into random places on my person best not mentioned to the public (they don’t make the most useful shirt pockets for girls clothing these days).
In the End
All that actually matters are the images I capture and that I got my work done as well! I can always bring my expensive camera everywhere else I go.
Until next time, Ceily Rae Highberger
All photos in “The iPhone Files” are taken with my iPhone 6s