Close Encounters of the Plant Kind

Or: Things You Never Knew You Wanted to Know About Every Cell Phone and Camera I’ve Ever Owned 

Currently, my only outdoor activity is semi-aimless wandering around outside while trying to avoid other people as much as possible. Which really isn’t too far from my normal outdoor activities, but lately in doing so, I’ve discovered a number of parks and nature areas accessible to me. The nature areas are basically just woods with unpaved paths that people have ended up making through them. Many of them have no signage or parking lots and are accessed through neighborhoods. They tend to be pretty quiet and unfrequented, especially if you visit during weird times and questionable weather conditions, and the trails can get unmaintained and muddy, all of which suits me just fine.

Moss friends. Non-vascular plants that produce spores, not seeds.
So you could say they reproduce spore-adically.
55 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 s, ISO-100

I usually take my camera along with me, because what I really need is to add to my collection of pictures of trees, and also you never know when you might stumble on something worth photographing. Since I really do have a lot of photos of trees, I’ve recently been trying to take pictures of other plants when I go out. This also takes advantage of a DSLR’s ability to play with depth of field and exposure. Point and shoots tend to have a large depth of field because of their short focal lengths and smaller sensors, so a lot of the picture will be in focus. I would say this is true of phones as well, but of course some of the newer iPhones are starting to be able to control depth of field, though I think it’s done on the iPhone via post-processing, not as the photo’s being taken.

Probably some sort of bluebell.  Possibly Virginia bluebells.
55 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 s, ISO-200

On my trusty Fujifilm FinePix XP55¹, which I’m not sure is retailed anymore, even if anyone actually wanted to buy one, the most control over the settings you have is picking the ISO and white balance, which amounts to choosing how blurry and discolored you’d like your photo to be. There’s also a macro option, but at best it kind of works. My current phone has a camera that’s merely not great as opposed to absolutely abysmal, but I’m apparently old and grumpy enough that holding my phone still, keeping my finger off the lens, and getting the touchscreen to register that I am, in fact, pressing the shutter button all at the same time is more trouble than carrying an entirely separate device.

Taraxacum officinale.  Otherwise known as the common dandelion.
55 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 s, ISO-100

I got my first cell phone when I went to college. It was a flip phone that I had for about a year and a half. I’m pretty sure it had a camera, but I don’t remember ever actually using it. That phone was replaced by a touchscreen phone. I didn’t ask for it; it was paid for and mailed directly to my dorm room by my parents. This was the phone that I dropped sometime during winter of my junior year trying to get into Olin on a weekend. I put tape over the parts most likely to splinter into my finger and kept using it. I did end up getting a new phone after that school year, which I used for almost four years, well into grad school. That phone was notable because in the age of selfies and facetiming, it had no front camera. The camera it did have was functional, but you wouldn’t choose to use it unless your other option was something like, say, carving stone tablets. I also just discovered that I did at some point crack the screen all along one side. I eventually replaced that phone because apps stopped updating for that version of Android. Now my phone has both a front and back camera, and I do occasionally take pictures with it if I need a quick snapshot of something or don’t have my DSLR. I still do all my primary photography with a dedicated camera (the Canon Rebel T6) though, and still only have the kit lens. Anyway, enjoy the plants.

Bonus: Not a plant.  Polypores, or bracket or shelf fungi.
55 mm, f/5.6, 1/60 s, ISO-100

¹This thing is waterproof, shockproof, dustproof, and freezeproof². It survived being dragged almost everywhere I went at Cornell. Four years of hockey rinks, pep band trips, hiking gorges, mealtimes; it’s been exposed to zero-degree weather and taken to the top of the climbing wall. I still keep it charged but only use it in situations where I can’t bring my DSLR.

²Why yes, I have damaged at least 2 phones and 1 camera (some model of a Canon PowerShot, if I remember correctly) by dropping them.