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Cellpic Sunday – Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon Viewpoint

Bryce Canyon, Utah.

In 2013, my cellphone of choice was a Samsung S3. It was my first Smart Phone. I had to decide whether or not I wanted an iPhone or 4G. At that time, 4G was newly available but the iPhone wasn’t yet being sold with the technology. I opted for the 4G and have been a Samsung cellphone user ever since.

In late October that year, we stopped at Bryce Canyon expecting to view the park. Regular readers may recall that we arrived in the area late one afternoon in fog and rain, and by the next morning, when we left our hotel to capture sunrise images in the park, we found a world of white with at least a foot of snow covering our car. Bryce only had two viewpoints open that day, but the snow-covered peaks were spectacular.

About the photo: The previous afternoon, with its fog and rain, took a back seat in my mind to the beauty of the freshly fallen snow the next day, and there were a few foggy images that I didn’t process, or if I did, they were processed with my photo tools of the day, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements.

Eager to explore the tools in Luminar Neo, I happened upon this image and decided to experiment. After loading the original JPEG into Lightroom, I sent it off to Neo to see what I might be able to do with it.

The truth is that Luminar Neo is still a work in progress. I could have completed every edit in Luminar AI except one. I used the Relight AI tool in Neo to adjust the lighting and the line it defines between foreground and background brightness. You can view the image in 2K HD on my Flickr site here.

As this is being written in late February, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is well underway. Skylum Software, the developer of the Luminar series and other photo processing software has a base of operations in Kyiv. Whether or not the recent events have an effect on their operations, I hope for the safety of their workers, and indeed for all of the people in Ukraine.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

51 comments

  4. I too am a Samsung user. I bought the first one as it had big keys for fat fingers. Upgrades since have reduced in size so I have to double check for typos. I am sticking with my Samsung9 for a while now until it decides it no longer wants to function 🙂

    Reply

  5. Bryce Canyon is such a beautiful place to explore and photograph. I hope to visit one day to see its natural beauty in person 😊 thanks for sharing and have a good day ☺️ Aiva

    Reply

      • I’ve read good reviews about the 22. My problem is every phone has 5G now, and we barely have 4G where we live. We have Verizon which is great, but all the new phones are ridiculously expensive. I still have plenty of life in my note!

      • She would have been happy with her S9 had it not started giving us issues. New phones certainly are expensive. At first, she bought a Google Pixel 6, because the S22 wasn’t yet available. We had it but a few days, and she didn’t like it at all. Even though we were penalized a $45 restocking fee, we returned it and got an S22 which she is much happier with.

      • That’s good to know, John. I’ve been trying to find reviews of the camera element of the S22 compared my my Note 10+ but can’t find anything. I’ll eventually have to go to a Verizon store and ask.

  16. Beautiful, John, and one of the places I look forward to seeing again when my husband retires and can travel for more than a day. 🙂 Since the majority of photos on my blog are cell photos, I could normally just link my post but today’s was taken with my Nikon. Maybe next week. Safe travels.

    janet

    Reply

  26. I have not been to Bryce Canyon. Your photo inspires me to get there! My dad went long ago, and he urged me to go saying it was the most beautiful place he’d ever been. Vince and I need to quit playing around with fixing up stuff and travel. Here’s my cell pic post for this week. All the pictures except the parade pictures were taken with either my iPhone 6, or my iPhone 12 mini. Where would we be without cell phones? Here’s my link. https://alwayswrite.blog/2022/03/30/wqw-12-rain-has-the-edge-or-writers-choice/

    Reply

      • Okay, I might be getting very jealous! But why not, grab life and enjoy it while you are both healthy. I’m happy for you both. You are both such a pleasure to be with – full of interests and support for each other.

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