Landscape Photoshoot - Ghosts

  This was my most frustrating photoshoot by far. I downloaded a DSLR app on my phone that was inexpensive and I actually really like. So, I was excited to get out and play around with the settings and see what I liked best for landscapes. Unfortunately, my phone didn’t like the cold, and kept crashing. When I turned it back on, it would alternate between telling me the battery was at ten percent and giving me an accurate battery reading. At first, I thought that maybe it was the app, that I had taken to many RAW photos already and my old-ass phone just didn’t like it. It became apparent that it was the cold, however, when I tried opening the regular camera app, then any other app, and the same thing happened. I had considered the problem might be the temperature, since I remember my phone crashing when I lived here and would take photos during long walks along the coastal trail. I presumed it was the new DSLR app this time though, because I remember my phone crashing when the temps were around zero or lower, not twenty degrees like it was yesterday. In the end, I was fairly certain it was cold when I returned home and found that less than half of the photos I took had saved. This included photos taken with both apps and even most of the first photos I took on the shoot, long before my phone started crashing.

My first photo was taken from one of the locations I chose for last week’s assignment, and I used the DSLR app. The photo is looking across Westchester Lagoon, into Chugach State Park. The second photo is looking north across the estuary just south along the coastal trail from Westchester Lagoon, and was taken with my stock camera app during the worst of phone crashes. I took some really lovely photos looking east, upstream at the estuary too. Unfortunately, none of those photos saved. However, a few photos that did save successfully were ones I took of an immature eagle (at least, that is what everyone present at the time seemed to think) sitting in a tree about five feet off the ground and about twenty feet west of the coastal trail. A group of half a dozen-or-so people and I stood there for quite a long while, one of them even had a dog that barked at bikes riding past on the trail, watching the huge bird. It seemed totally disinterested in the people and even the dog. In fact, I was concerned that family members I have been helping might not be able to get in touch with me during an emergency with my phone crashing, so I actually left before the eagle. None of my best photos saved, so this one is mediocre at best, but I to add it as a third, bonus photo anyway, just because I was able to get so close to such an impressive creature.