“Almost without fan fare, trips to foreign climes resulted in proper cameras being left at home”

Ihave always been fascinated by photography. The feel of the camera, the satisfaction of the physical action of winding the film forward by one frame, the reassurance of the clunk as the photo is taken. And, if you get into the realms of large format photography, using 5 x 4in film, then you open up a whole new world of adjusting the lens position and orientation away from being parallel to the film. This allows all sorts of “movements” to alter the plane of focus, to correct for perspective. Best of all, given the high cost of each shot, you enter a zen state where you’re happy to wait half an hour for that cloud to move into exactly the right place relative to the tree.

Then you enter the world of high-end 35mm, and discover it’s possible to have a serious addiction to the incredible glass made by Leica. Wallet meltdown rapidly ensues.

The arrival of the smartphone changed everything. As the quality of images taken by phones improved, it became less necessary to carry a camera body and several lenses. Almost without fanfare, my trips to foreign climes resulted in proper cameras being left at home. What started as “just about good enough” was soon swept aside by the rise of much better optics, sensor capabilities and, most importantly, software that could work with the images to improve them, correct issues and produce a better picture.

One of these tricks was to build a high dynamic range (HDR) image by compositing together two images taken one after the other. One image would have the exposure set correctly for the bright parts, the second image would be exposed for the darker