Julin

Monge-Njera

Cats, Dogs, Flowers and Landscapes with a Phone

Camera: a professional photographer shows you
his best photos

TROPINATURE

Copy right 201 4 by Julin Monge-Njera

Published by Tropinature Press, San Jos, Costa Rica
Design J.Monge-N.
Monge-Njera, Julin, 1 960Cats, Dogs, Flowers and Landscapes with a Phone Camera: a professional photographer shows y ou his best photos.
95 pages, 24x20 cm
ISBN 9968-9867 -0X-4 and Blurb ISBN
1 . Photography Cell phone camera. 2. Photography Cellcell phone. 3. Photography Coronado Costa Rica. 4.
Photography Pets, flowers and landscape.

Introduction
On April 2014 I decided to store my
professional camera and to exclusively use the
simpler camera in my cell phone for a few
weeks. Half a year before I had read the story
of Sasa Huzjak, a professional Croatian
photographer who documented his hospital
stay with a cell phone camera (in his blog post
My hospital eye). He did not explain why, but I
think photography allowed Huzjak to keep his
mind creative and busy in something more
pleasant than medical procedures. If that was
the case, I understand him: taking photographs
has helped me cope with airplane flights, an
experience that I deeply dislike.
Series with a telephone camera may be a trend
these days. Recently, David Guttenfelder, on
assignment in Asia, not only shot professional
images for the Associated Press but also used
his cell phone to document more personal
aspects of his travels, and published them in
Instagram. Curiously, both Huzjak and
Guttenfelder chose to publish their images in
black and white. Guttenfelder said that he
needed something to distinguish both series
stylistically, and I suspect black and white
helps hide some of the image quality problems
that phone cameras may have.

For my own project I thought of black and

white, but after a few tests I discarded the
idea: some subjects need the color, like the
flowers in this book. The elimination of color
can also be an ideological element; I
remember and old article that showed the
same images of a poor American
neighborhood in color and in black and
white: the black and white images made the
place look poor and sad; the color images
caused a very different impression.
How good are the tiny digital cameras on
cell phones? I did not buy any digital
camera for years because I read that their
image quality was no match for traditional
film. In 2014 I still find that argument in the
media. But after examining even my oldest
digital images, made with a 4.2 megapixel
Kodak camera, I must confess they have
better detail and color than any 35 mm
print in my collection. Under most practical
circumstances, today the "digital is inferior"
belief is wrong and I wish I had waited less
to test it myself, instead of relying on "the
experts".
Of course, when light is poor or subjects are
moving, cell phone cameras normally fail to
produce acceptable photographs. But I was

delighted with the idea of having to work

with their limitations and not having to
carry my expensive and bulky DSLR
around. For the subject, I chose my current
"natural" habitat: my home and the area
that surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, a
patchwork of cattle grassland, agricultural
landscape and tiny forest remains in
Central Costa Rica. Cats, dogs, flowers,
insects, landscapes and a few other subjects
in the weeks following my decision. These
images are not as the phone produced
them: I used software to sharpen a bit
nearly all images and for cropping, light and
color correction.

proof of my argument. The deeply colored and

textured flower close-ups that I include here seem
to me better than the close-ups that my
professional camera renders with its zoom lens.
I thank my family and friends for supporting my
photographic projects.
Julin Monge-Njera
Cascajal de Coronado, San Jos
Costa Rica, May 2014

An old advertisement said that you do not

expect to play better with a more
expensive piano, and extended the
argument to cameras. There was some
truth in it: the ad had several identical
photos and asked the reader to identify
which was taken with a very expensive
camera and which with an affordable one. I
could not tell. In the case of cell phone
cameras, they now have large sensors (12
megapixels in my Xperia) but normally
poor optics. Nevertheless, you can still take
excellent photographs with a phone and
obtain better results than I did when I had
my Yashica with the best Fuji, Ilford or
Kodak 35 mm film. I think this book is
5

CATS
6

There were no cats around when I made this image, one of

my fav orites with a phone, but certainly cats would hav e
lov ed the trout that this Coronado farm boy is carry ing so
happily . The image reminds me of Norman Rockwell's
paintings for the Saturday Ev ening Post.

The parallel of the two arms attracted me immediately. The cat even seemed to be
reaching for the scissors!
The image of the right convinced me that I could obtain beautiful photographs with a
phone camera. The black stool and nearly black stone floor tiles nicely highlighted her
whiskers.

Negrito, our black male cat, tells a lot with his expression. Sweet Godzilla, on the other hand, easily fools you
with her placid face. Nevertheless, she earned her name by leaving behind a trail of broken things. The
unobtrusive phone camera allowed me to get close enough for these portraits.

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The small lens of the phone camera, and the weak flash that usually comes with it, are excellent for closeups that
just a few years ago were impossible with most cameras. The results appear a bit abstract to me and hint of the
enormous complexity of any cat.

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One day I heard unusual calls among our pets and found this scene when I came to investigate.

Cats, among the smallest of felines (Siberian tigers are 50 times heavier), are still hunters at heart. Like their
ancestors, they are fascinated by small mammals, birds and insects, all natural prey to them.
Right image: Churro, our smart but shy black and white female. Normally only my son can approach her:
taking this photograph was particularly difficult.

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DOGS
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Tifn, our male German shepherd, is the ideal pet. Fiercely protective of the family, yet invariably obedient when
we call him. I got this detail of his eye without any difficulty. Light colored Ginger, on the other hand, is a frisky
half breed Golden Retriever that we adopted when her original owner decided that he could no longer keep her.
She is a beauty, but she still needs a lot of education and I had to lure her with food to get this photograph.

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A close-up of our dear mongrel Amber on a sunny day, ideal light for a camera phone that can record every hair
despite not being mounted on a tripod.
Right: this dog was sitting in the garden of a small rural restaurant the specializes in trout. To get so close I
squatted, looked away and tried to point the phone in the right direction. That way the dog attempted to see what
I was watching and did not run away. Of course, I shot several times and only later checked if I had gotten any
acceptable image: this is the one I liked.

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I love this image of Tifn and Ginger: she seems to be quite aware of the power of old Tifn's tattered teeth.
Right: not a studio photograph, just proof of the wonderful technology that cell phones are. Model: Ginger again.

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FLOWERS
AND INSECTS

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Small lenses let you take macro photography with good depth of field. Here the phone camera was more
satisfactory than my professional camera and I could get very close (to be fair, my professional camera does not
have a specialized macro lens and macro photography is not my field of expertise). The trick here is to wait for
nice light and to avoid the windy times of the day. Wind will result in blurry photographs. As far as I can
remember, I did not use any flash for these flowers.

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While the bi-colored flower on the left has the simplicity of some modern art, the one on the right is full of color
and I was particularly interested in recording the delicate water droplets. Both images are from overcast days and
with natural light. The phone was hand-held but I recommend a tripod if you want to seriously do macro
photography with a phone or, in fact, with any camera.
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These images speak by themselves!

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Originally I was attracted by how the back light defined the leaf venation on the left photograph. Then I noticed
the firefly, a beetle that uses light to attract and select mates. The right image is not from Coronado, I saw this
tiny island of a plant in a sea of gravel in the highlands of Central Costa Rica and only had the phone with me.

33

This might be a fly just warming up in the early morning sun, or a male fly guarding a leaf that serves as mating
territory. I did not stay long enough to find out but was surprised that a phone camera could record such detail
in a tiny scenery. The beautiful flowery fence on the right is also from the highlands, I saw it close to a coffee
shop and having no other camera with me, tried the Xperia. This fence reminds me of rural fences in Russia.
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PLANTS
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These ferns could have been reproduced in black and white for emphasis: I wanted to contrast an image that gets
its strength from color and one that gets it from texture. The potted plant was in front of a red roof tin in a rural
roadside restaurant. The ferns grow outside our home's dining room and the photograph corresponds to the late
afternoon when the sun starts to descend on the horizon; that sunshine tint is the reason why I did not convert it
to black and white.
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Two very contrasting types of thorns, yet both are there for protection. Just imagine you could not run away in a
world full of huge animals that ate ... yes, you! That is the world of plants and their herbivores. We can only be
glad that plants cannot think (I hope we are right about that!).

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Decaying leaves become fragmented and the biochemical components return to the soil, including Carbon
that is so important in global warming. The sandy rubble near a small construction site (right) also becomes
fragmented but we normally do not notice it. It is easy to place a phone camera at ground level to discover
these tiny landscapes of unexpected beauty and complexity. Another advantage to take note of.
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A tiny prairie of lichens grows on old wood. Lichens are part of two very different worlds: plants (algae) and
fungi. They probably were among the first beings to conquer the land. Ferns, like lichens, are ancient and suffer
very little herbivory: they have chemical defenses that are far more successful than those of modern plants.
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Unlike in page 38, here I reduced the color in one of the plant images for a better contrast. Your eyes are more
likely to notice the protective hairs and the spider silk when there is no distraction from color.

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Both the horsetails (Equisetaceae, left) and the ferns belong to ancient plant lineages. They were very old when
the first dinosaur was born, a fact that never fails to fascinate me: if I were I dinosaur, I could have seen
practically these very same things close to the Triassic and Jurassic grounds.
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I wondered if this fallen flower could still distinguished in black and white. Now I know.
The image on the right corresponds to the place where I photographed the dog of page 21. You can let the kids
fish their own rainbow trout and have it professionally prepared for lunch. I felt sorry for the trouts so soon I got
back inside and made myself busy with the vase of fresh flowers.
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Two very different treatments of similar images. Monochromy can produce a more nostalgic impression, but I
recommend you always shoot in color to make black and white (or tinted) versions in post-processing. Compare
them and make your decision when you feel that color adds nothing to the image.
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An internal garden in our home: very early in the day the sun illuminated this plant from behind, showing the
delicate tissues. I moved the camera around until I had a dark background to highlight the effect.
Just outside the very same room where I photographed the potted plant, the deep red inflorescence of the
Gunnera insignis, a giant tropical plant, looks very different in a foggy Coronado morning.
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Plant "hairs" may have a variety of functions, like water equilibrium, protection from ice and wind, and
avoidance of herbivores large and small. Some even have chemicals that cause severe allergies in mammals.
These are harmless: I touched them.

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VARIED
SCENES
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I photographed the hillsides of Poas Volcano while looking for harvestmen that a Panamanian friend needed for
his zoological research. The image on the right is a view of the Bay of Panama. I took it on an overcast day just
before a small storm hit the coast. This is also among my favorite phone photographs ever.
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The Coronado fields after a short rain. Everything is moist and the loaded atmosphere softens the landscape, yet
there are still nice colors to frame the distant volcanic range.
The black and white photograph of an old wall makes a nice contrast thanks to its crisp details of wood fibers
and paint layers.
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Hummingbirds move too rapidly for phone cameras, specially on an overcast day like this near Cerro Linda Vista,
Costa Rica. Yet I find this image beautiful. The dazzling colors of hummingbirds were lost in this photograph,
but colors greatly enhance these dwellings in the Casco Antiguo of Panama. In black and white this place could
look poor and sad, but the color gives a more realistic view of the mood I experienced there.

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When I saw these photographs I felt that they belonged together but ignored why. One is sunny and colorful, the
other dark and with reduced color. Now I think I felt they were related because of their conspicuous leading lines.
Left: hillsides of Pos Volcano in Costa Rica. The coast is the Bay of Panama and if you look carefully you can see
the Bridge of the Americas in the distance.

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A painted seahorse sculpture in the middle of a dairy farm in Coronado, and colorful reflections in a collection
vehicle (a Packard in the 2014 Automobile Show, San Jos, Costa Rica). It is hard to see how a sea horse belongs
in a highland farm or how the Packard relates to a seahorse, so I am passing the problem to you!

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LANDSCAPES

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The neo-Gothic style church of San Isidro de Coronado was built in the 1930s.
I was driving home one day and noticed the beautiful but unusual dry season illumination, parked and reached
for my phone. That is the idea with a telephone camera: it is there when you need it.
On another, less sunny day, I saw this foggy scene less than 2 km from the church. Who would have thought
that it was the same area!
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Coronado is still occupied by active dairy farms but properties are increasingly being sold for housing projects and
I think it is only the foggy weather than saves it from being fully, and sadly, urbanized. This photographs were
taken on different days but only a few hundred meters apart.

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Again, these two sites in Coronado are close to each other, in this case literally 100 meters apart, yet they
look very different thanks to the changing weather conditions. Locals have one advantage: they normally
know when it will be sunny so they can plan ahead. As a newcomer, I have had to do a lot of trial and error
but I can always find something worth of a photograph.
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The soft sunshine in the left can make some people pick up their boots and go out for a walk, while the dreamy
landscape on the right may invite others to meditation with a warm mug of chocolate (both: Coronado).

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Trees growing in two contrasting environments. The one on the left, exposed to the heat and wind of the Bay of
Panama, probably has more moisture and stress pollution than those on the right, that grow in the very clean
and moist air of Coronado, Costa Rica, but have to deal with strong winds and cold nights.

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This two landscapes are only 1 km apart but land relief exposes them to different winds: the trees on the left have
less water available for their development and thus look different from those on the moist side of the hill.

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A tree from a distance can look very different from a tree used to frame a landscape. Whenever I can I try to
follow this advice: always take at least three very different views of each subject.

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My job takes me to places like this (left: Franja Costera, Panama) but I always return home to Cascajal de
Coronado (right). If your front yard looked like this you probably would too.

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Even a ragged farm complex can look more attractive to some people than the tall buildings of a modern city. I
pressed the phone camera to my hotel window to obtain these two views of the city when the so called "blue
hour" approached.

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Another one of my favorite phone photographs. I was driving home and passed by the San Pedro de Coronado
school. Unlike their peers in New York and other cities, those from the San Pedro school see this pastoral scene
through their windows (lucky children!). The cows were coming towards the fence on the side of the road, the
light was perfect and the phone was in my pocket. I held the phone again the car window for a sharper image.
The photograph on the right makes a good contrast because in it the cows are not a central element, yet the
image gains a lot by having them on top of the hill.

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GOOD BYE
What are my conclusions from the Xperia
experiment?
The first question you could ask me if I will
abandon my professional camera, which by the
way I did not identify. I have a Nikon, but at
home we also have Canon and Sony professional
cameras, and if I could I would buy the wonderful
Olympus OM or a Sigma as well. All of them
produce magnificent photographs and cost a
fraction of what you would have to pay for a Leica
or a Hasselblad. Now to the question: my answer
is no. I still plan to carry my professional camera
for photographs that I consider very important
because even if the number of megapixels is
similar (16 megapixels in my Nikon) I know that
even if the light is poor or the action fast I can still
get acceptable photographs. But for the rest of
the time, my answer is yes: I will always use my
phone camera when an unexpected opportunity
knocks.
Maybe in the future phone cameras will be as
good as a professional DSLR camera from today.
In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner you see a
photograph with astonishing detail, an idea taken
farther in Masaaki Taniguchi's Time Traveler,
where you can see internal cell organelles in a
photograph of a plant. Until that time comes, I
will be more than glad with the excellent cameras
that we already have in the early 21st. Century,
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and in the case of phone cameras, I would try

the Galaxy S 4 Zoom, which is said to solve the
two main problems of phone cameras: it can
take real telephoto images and it works in low
light thanks to its back side illuminated sensor.
This is not a book about how to take better
photographs with your cell phone. It is not
advertised as so, but if you read the descriptions
and examine the photographs you may learn
the basic tricks. These include taking full
advantage of the phone camera's
characteristics: you can put it in hard to reach
places that are off limits to professional
cameras; they take very good macro images,
they are there when unexpected scenes appear
and they are unobtrusive and mostly ignored by
people, pets and insects. Furthermore, in the
worst case scenario, when light is poor and you
cannot increase it, you can take silhouettes or
nice blurs (like I did with the hummingbirds for
this book). Of course, if you liked my results and
want to improve your own work, you can do like
Benjamin Franklin did when he wanted to learn
how to write: he read the best authors available
to him and tried to copy their style story by
story (do not believe me? read his
autobiography).
This book is a personal project (originally called
The Xperia Experience) and I had a great time
doing it. A disclaimer: a few photographs in this
book are not from my Xperia but from an older
Nokia phone (for example, the cows in the
penultimate photograph). But most are from

those weeks of phone camera work.

I hope that you enjoyed reading the text and
looking at the photographs: I wrote the book I
would have liked to read. In the future I could
make others on landscapes, portraits and art
nudes, for example. Anyway I will follow this
formula of doing what I enjoy, just for fun, and
then sharing it with you, for double fun. Until
then, thanks and good bye.
Julin

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About the author

Julin Monge-Njera is a Costa Rican ecologist, scientific editor,

educator and photographer born in 1960.
For many years he has acted as scientific adviser for the BBC and the
National Geographic Society. He was Regional Editor of the United
Nations' Global Environmental Outlook ("GEO Report") and has been
a researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the
National Museum of Costa Rica, the University of Costa Rica and the
Distance Education University of Costa Rica. He has also done research
as part of teams with the USDA (USA), Uppsala University (Sweden),
University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Nanjing Institute of
Geology and Paleontology (China). He is Curator of the Encyclopedia of
Life (USA) and Team Member of the IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species (Switzerland).
He is author of more than 200 scientific articles and of 20 books
published by several Costa Rican universities and Oxford University.

"On April 2014 I decided to give up my professional camera to exclusively use the simpler
camera in my Xperia cell phone for a few weeks.
I was delighted with the idea of having to work with their limitations and not having to
carry my expensive and bulky DSLR around. For the subject, I chose my current "natural"
habitat: my home and the area that surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, a patchwork of
cattle grassland, agricultural landscape and tiny forest remains in Central Costa Rica.
Flowers, insects, cattle, people, pets and other scenes would all come under the attention
of my Xperia cell phone camera in the weeks following my decision.
Here are the results."

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"On April 2014 I decided to give up my professional camera to exclusively use the simpler
camera in my cell phone for a few weeks.
I was delighted with the idea of having to work with their limitations and not having to
carry my expensive and bulky DSLR around. For the subject, I chose my current "natural"
habitat: my home and the area that surrounds it in Cascajal de Coronado, a patchwork of
cattle grassland, agricultural landscape and tiny forest remains in Central Costa Rica.
Flowers, insects, cattle, people, pets and other scenes would all come under the attention of
my phone camera in the weeks following my decision. Here are the results."