I'm pretty sure that almost all here own decent or excellent cameras, but I imagine that quite a lot of us (myself included), sometimes see the opportunity for a great shot and don't have our camera to hand. We do however have our phones. The quality of the cameras on the phones is getting better and better, so I'm wondering if any of you regularly use any post processing apps made specifically for phones? I came across a free app a while ago called "Snapseed", and if you haven't already tried it, I highly recommend it! I'd be interested to know if any of you have used anything other than that one that you would recommend.

A little contribution to the After Dark topic this month. The first is the only recent photo in this batch. The rest go back fifteen to twenty years. Starting with the first, I had gone down to the beach early, and only because of the fog. The second two were taken after midnight while on Monhegan Island. The cloud cover made it very dark, and were both around twenty second exposures. I like the grainy quality that this very early sensor produced.
The next three are fire as you can see. A more complicated endeavor than I would have imagined. The bigger the fire, the more light, and lower the iso can go, but the hotter the fire, the faster it moves, requiring a faster shutter speed. If you didn't have a high enough shutter speed it's just a blur, and I wanted well defined flames. Hard to get a workable balance, and the only place where I could produce these large fires was a friends place in Vermont. The last two tripod mounted, seeing what I could come up with moving the camera around.

After Dark

Our topic for this month will be night time photography. Let’s define it as anything shot while the sun is not above the horizon. This would include the blue hour in the evening after the sun drops below the horizon and also the blue hour before the sun emerges from below the horizon in the morning.

Long exposures that show light streaks from passing cars are a good example for this challenge. You might also think about landscapes, especially in the morning when there is a glow on the horizon; but the sun is not yet above the horizon. Clouds will also feature in any landscape photos because they show color before the sun rises and they hold color after the sun sets.

You can chose photos from your archives; but it is hoped that this challenge might also inspire you to go out and shoot during September with the topic in mind. Let us know if this is something you do regularly and what challenges the topic might have presented. Remember that this is not a photo competition; but instead an opportunity to discuss the topic. I’ll offer an example to get us started; but this is only a starting point. This will probably be a long thread. Don’t let that discourage you. It is, after all, a big topic. Have fun.
Erich


The posted photos. I'm going to post three photos to get the topic started. I took my own advice and shot all of these this evening. There was no color because the sky was completely overcast. I checked sunset time and all were shot after sunset. The liquor store was shot without a tripod. I used high ISO and relatively fast shutter with wide open aperture. For the long exposure shot of the boat, I totally forgot to take into account that the waves would move the boat. (Parked cars remain sharp, parked boats not so much). I'll post others throughout the month; but these might serve as an example of the type of photos you can get without any sun.
Have fun shooting

Thank you minniev and ChrisKet. I just looked at my photos setting. At the bottom, I did have “keep originals” chosen. Also, all the slider switches above that, in the photos setting page, are slid to “off” so none of them is active. But as I say, I think somehow, the iPad program assumes I want to export to a cloud or send the file and is thus reducing the file size. The lesson learned for me is to never edit with the Apple software, as in about five years of my method of doing backups (onto the SanDisk stick using the iPad) never before have I seen this issue. Thanks again to all. JimR.