10 Minute Photo Outing Challenge

Get out there and enjoy photography. It doesn't always have to be about taking amazing works of art…

The video where I attempt taking photos in the bitter cold for 10 minutes with a phone. Technically I had two phones and spent time filming the video.

If you want to get some photography practice in, but have limited time, then I think this could be a fun photography challenge. While I was out for the day, I brought a small kit that included my main phone for photos (LG Stylo 3), an older one for b-roll (XG L Power), and a small flexible tripod. It was 17 degrees F and I didn’t have a set goal in mind until I thought of limiting it to 10 minutes to see what I could manage in that amount of time. 

This park has fun lighting at night. It’s great to experiment with.

This isn’t about quality or taking perfect images. It’s about pushing yourself and always trying to learn, practice, and grow in your craft. Always try to keep moving forward. In my case I’m usually doing a mixture of photograph and videography at the same time. It adds to the hurdle I have to get over each time because that means more gear and more juggling of that equipment. 

Video quality in extremely dark conditions on the LG X Power phone leaves something to be desired… haha.

Cold and dark...

The result of the behind the scenes photo above.

The nice thing about phones is that they are compact and can often be brought with you nearly anywhere if you have a pocket large enough. In my case taking my current phone and an older one for b-roll video isn’t any extra effort, so it works well. I have a bendable tripod that is often left in my car that I can use for the phone doing video.

For photography I’m often using the Open Camera application. Thanks to Mark Harman for investing so much time into that application and offering it up as open source. Someday I’d like to examine the code in detail. This app adds a lot of additional functionality to the phone compared to the default camera application. While it can’t do full manual settings, it can do exposure compensation and in turn lock that exposure. That adds flexibility for creatively deciding on exposure. The biggest feature is that it can write DNG RAW images that allow for more possibilities in post processing compared to JPEGs from the phone. 

What ISO ~2205 on the LG Stylo 3 looks like after editing the DNG. Not amazing, but fun to practice with.