Well yesterday did not go anywhere near what as planned. And I might as well be clear from the get-go that the photo associated with this post, above, was not made with my new Samsung Galaxy s21 Ultra 5G; more about that in a minute.
Yesterday morning is one of my walk days with this crazy on-going pandemic, as I have been trying to extend the duration and include a few more ‘gentle’ hills into the subdued exercise routine. Except I am about half way on my trip when my phone starts beeping in my pocket. Which was odd since as far as I knew it was on but not ‘open’.
Egads! The phone was again in the new phone set-up mode (Please choose a language message), which means that potentially everything in the phone’s memory was now wiped clean. This has happened before! And I had been lazy and not downloaded about two weeks worth of Snapseed image tweaks from my earlier Memory Pods series photographs. I could assume these were gone, with the upside that the raw original photo files had been downloaded to my Mini M1 at the beginning of the month. Crap, crap, crap and a bunch more crap!
So long story short, I did not restart the phone (an ancient Samsung s5 4G) but turned it off and on my return to the home/studio I would be heading to the Verizon store to meet with their tech gurus; could they save my revised Snapseed images? A good walk relatively ruined. I was now not in the best of spirits. Also realized that this was the fourth time it had occurred; time for a new phone. Looking back, I should have dumped this s5 phone after the third time (classic three strike rule), but that was during the pandemic, so kinda of home/studio-bound and did not really want to venture out. In retrospect; a mistake. But it is what it is and hopefully I learned something from this…
At Verizon I was greeted with the bad news, all of my saved Snapseed photos were on the phone’s memory, not on a memory chip. Gone. So there was not much I could do with that bit of crappy news now. Something about ‘closing the barn door after the cows have already wondered out’ kinda of thing.
I had completed a quick internet check on Samsung phones before heading to the store and it did appear that for photographers, the Samsung Galaxy s21 Ultra 5G was the way to go. So I did. Only issue was the unavailability of the 512Gb model, so I settled for the 126Gb, which still has a ton more memory than what I had in the s5, although realizing the Galaxy s21 Ultra created larger images. But I needed a phone. Today. So I did the deal and now I am trying to figure out all of the changes to the new phone’s operation that have occurred over the past eight years. Sort of old school; if what you have seems to work, then why make a phone/camera change, eh?
Also working my way through a funk as I really need to find my mojo; almost daunting to go through all of the apps to reload, where are all of the controls, etc, etc, but the upside is the new camera options to play with. Such as the Pro Photo mode; I can actually adjust white balance, ISO, shutter speed, etc. More about that in a latter post after I poke the camera functions a bit more.
Another down side; my Ala Vera plant that I photograph for my Memory Pods series has finished going to seed, the seed pods are dead and dried and all but one stalk have been trimmed down. So to experiment/play on the Memory Pods series will be extremely limited with the new phone camera. Which maybe a good thing…keep my options to a minimum so that I might actually remember what I did to obtain the effects that resulted. duh.
As to the photograph above, one of the aspects that I had planned to investigate this year was adding a bit more complexity to my compositions by including other botanical elements, something I had started to experiment with last year. The additional components within the framing could be representative of the ‘others’ in our lives…
So now into a brave new world of the Galaxy s21 Ultra, eh?
Cheers
Doug
Memory Pods series (#071855) copyright Douglas Stockdale 2021
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Workshops:
Developing a Creative Photo Book, a virtual (Zoom) workshop I will be leading again in conjunction with Medium Photo, September 11th, 12th, 18th, & 19th, New dates: March 5 – 6, 12 – 13, 2022 More details and sign-up available now at Medium Photo. New Dates!
New Book Workshop added: I will be leading a Creative Photo Book workshop with the Southeast Center of Photography (SEC4P) later in the Fall of this year. This will be a virtual event (Zoom); November 6 & 7th and 13 & 14th, 2021, 10 AM – 1 PM, EDT (3 hour session each day, with a week between the weekend sessions to work your book-dummy). Registration is now open, and there is a SEC4P membership discount. Just advised that it is half-way sold out. Let me know if you have any questions!
Singular Images 