I was busy photographing a clementine when someone asked what I was doing on my phone. I quickly snapped a picture with my iPhone and I was surprised at how good the photographs were. I proceeded to snap some photographs with the iPhone and my Nikon D300 (as I planned).

I placed a clementine on a black backdrop and took some close-up photographs and also just regular ones with my 50mm lens. The striking orange color against the dark black backdrop was just aesthetically pleasing to my eye. Again, I was surprised at how well the iPhone did. I lowered the brightness and the black took over.

See, for example, this was taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron Zoom Lens.

And this was taken with my iPhone.

The most obvious difference is the shallow depth of field with the Nikon D300, but the iPhone manages some natural blurring but the whole fruit is kind of in focus. I am no iPhone camera expert but the aperture is not in your control as much as a manual camera. But it seems like it has an f/1.8 aperture lens which is great!

Anyways, I played with natural light again and got some interesting shots. The "blackness" always reminds me of a sickness trying to eat the thing I am photographing. In my younger school days, I called the series of photographs I did then (with the same camera!) Black Eating Things. Better times! In any case, I am posting the Nikon D300 photographs first and then the iPhone ones. In the end, I muse some bit on this darkness that seems to devour everything.

Nikon D300 Photographs

iPhone Photographs

Postscriptum, or Darkness Devouring a Clementine

The venom of a snake or other insect moves slowly through one's veins. The darkness surrounding this clementine looks like a paused version of venom trying to enter one's body. Or, it looks like a darkness that tries to devour or consume the clementine. It is a kind of paused or slowed-down horror story. But this darkness will never win, as it is paused. Perpetually, always, forever, it will try to consume the poor defenseless clementine. Yet, the clementine is long gone, consumed by something else (me) and already part of nature again. But here we can capture something and present it perpetually. Or will it be like that? They say we are moving into the dark ages again, for we do everything "online" and "in the cloud", if something should happen like a big enough solar flare......

Let us not go there now.

All of the photographs are my own, as well as the musings. Thank you for visiting, and stay safe! Happy photographing.