This weekend my sister April Galloway and I have been participating in the Spring Photography Weekend at Pennyrile State Forest and Resort Park’s Spring Photography Weekend just outside of Dawson Spings, Ky. I guess we’ve been coming to these events pretty much for 8 years or more now and also attend the one in the fall as well.

I love getting together with a large group of fellow photographers on events like this. The enthusiasm is always a shot in the arm when it comes to my photography. Getting together to talk photography, shoot pictures, critique pictures and complain about the one that got away, no it doesn’t just happen in fishing, is always fun.

In the past I’ve always tried to commit myself on these weekends to something that makes me a better photographer when it comes to shooting. One year I opted to shoot a total of four pictures for the whole weekend event. Usually there’s four different categories in each division, beginner, intermediate and master. I shoot the latter. This year I chose to shoot and process all my pictures using my iPhone 4s.

The categories were Earth Day, what it means to me, Insects and Spiders, Natural Landscape and Wildflowers. That first category not only through me, but everyone else for a kinda loop. I’m not entirely satisfied with it, but felt it was one that said what I feel is a important part of what earth day is… recycling! When we checked into the room for the weekend I found this sign sitting on the dresser under the mirror and decided to do this as my entry for the first category.

I decided to challenge myself on the weekend with my iPhone because I wanted to learn better what I could and couldn’t capture while using it. As with most cameras in the point and shoot category, there area limitations on what it can do. Now, at this point I guess I should say I tried to talk the naturalist Becky Clark, jokingly of course, into letting me compete in the the point-and-shoot division, but she knows me better than that. Besides, I’ve always said it’s the person behind the camera that makes the picture, not the camera. It’s just the tool. Of course the better the tool sometimes the better the results, but that’s another post.

I used the built-in iPhone 4s camera, the PRO HDR and another app called 6×6 for my shooting.I really like the 6×6 app, but it shoots only a square format and I had it setup to add a border to each of the photos and didn’t want to do that for my entries. If you’d like to see some of those images you can visit my Facebook Fanpage at Jim Pearson Photography and you’ll find them in an album called 2012 Pennyrile Photos. If you’re quick and do this before tonight, April 22, 2012 then check back as they may not be uploaded there yet.  All the post processing for this weekend was pretty much done using the apps called Snapseed and PerfeclyClr. You can find them all in the iTunes store and don’t cost more than a couple dollars each.

Not sure how the judges will like what I did photographically this weekend, but I’m satisfied with my entries for the most part and more importantly I’ve learned to use the iPhone as an extension to my seeing pictures and capturing them better with this simple, but complicated device. The judging is underway as I post this and we’ll meet in a couple hours to listen to the results and critique by the judges. No matter the results, I feel I’ve come away from this weekend as a winner.

– Won 2nd place in the Masters Division.