Mobile Photography Awards 2020

Was delighted to receive two Honourable Mentions in the  Mobile Photography Awards 2020. What an incredible range of  photos on view at https://mobilephotoawards.com, between the winners of each category and the commended photos also.

Took the first photo at the iconic Blackrock Diving Tower in Galway last summer . We were staying in Galway  for one night and got to meander on the seafront for awhile on Saturday morning.  Despite the not so clement weather ,lots of swimmers arrived along with the incoming tide. The challenge as always is to find a point-of-view that works ! Took a number of shots with the iphone 11 from different angles and ended up using the wider angled camera to take a little more of the scene in. The burst mode is very helpful also when trying to freeze certain elements of the composition. The greyness of the day led me to a black and white interpretation of the scene . The wonderful Snapseed App is great for tweaking afterwards and also for conversion to black and white. This photo received an Honourable Mention in the Street Category.

I did some smartphone workshops online [ Gallery of Photography ]with the marvellous Brendan Ó Sé last October as I figured I'd be using the phone camera much more during lockdown, with travel for landscape photography etc off the agenda. Those series of workshops certainly encouraged me to use the phone camera much more on a daily basis and indeed there's quite a world to see in one's local patch !

The second shot is from the Bull Wall in November, a familiar stomping ground for many during the 5k restrictions. I entered this in 'The Darkness' section. The bleakness of the winter morning was well suited to a monochrome conversion in Snapseed and I also used Distressed FX App to add a texture to the sky.