Taiwan 2024 - iPhone 15 Series, Taipei Street Riders

Well, I'm starting something new here.  In the past I've consistently maligned the quality and usefulness of phone cameras.  Even on this trip, earlier in this "Taiwan 2024" series of posts, I did a comparison of the technical quality between my iPhone 15 Max Pro and the venerable Nikon D850, affectionately known as the Bigger Cahoona.  As seen from that post, at close examination the DSLR came out on top.

That being said, in a slight concession I'm going to switch gears beginning today.  This is partly due to the fact that, at screen resolutions and even in print, the detail that comes from the phone is more than adequate.  Also, I observed on this trip that the iPhone in fact does a much better job with certain types of pictures, particularly those that have high contrast with the sun out.  And finally, on a recent trip to Seattle a nephew taught me how to extract the very best potential from the phone using RAW, which improved color fidelity and resolution tremendously.  So here we are.  Phone pictures are good enough - perhaps even better - in many situations, especially when I want to capture cultural and candid shots where silence and discretion are a priority.

Next I had to learn how to work with the iPhone pics.  How is this animal different?  For beginners the dpi straight out of the camera is 72 (instead of the 300 defaulted with the D850), normally ranging in size between 5 and 8 megapixels.  In one street scene I upped the resolution to 300 dpi, and the size of that single JPEG ended up being a whopping 810 megabytes!  Wow, so we keep them at 72, then up it to 300 only when a print is needed.  Another adjustment to my workflow will include working with RAW files.  Using what my nephew taught me in Seattle, the pics snapped with the phone are nothing less than astounding.   I have Lightroom now and need the experience, so there's no excuse for not taking things up to the next level.

In post-capture after a trip or other photo session, I:  1) examine every photo taken and delete those that are not worth keeping in what I call the first cull - generally this ends up being about two-thirds of the lot; 2) carefully select those deemed blogworthy, frequently deleting more pics in what amounts to a second cull; 3) open each selected picture in Photoshop and touch up, saving the result as both a .psd and JPEG at lowest compression with the letter "a" appended to the file name; then finally 4) compress each touched-up picture down to about 1 megabyte with "comp" appended to the file name.  This smaller file size allows for faster upload times when posting each day.

Last night, in going through Steps 1 and 2 above with only the pictures taken with the iPhone, I ended up with a selection of 104 pictures!  Many surprised me at the look and technical quality when examined.  But if I post each of these pictures we're looking at another couple of months of the Taiwan 2024 series, and at present there are two more trips to cover.  Thus, I'll try to go through a second selection to narrow it down to 20-25 pics that might be of greater interest.

So here we go.  The picture above was captured from a car stopped at a light.  What makes it unique when we stop at lights all the time?  That would be the fact that the motorcycle riders are our niece and her son, who we saw on our way to somewhere.  Looks as though our niece has taken the opportunity to rest her eyes a bit before continuing their journey.  There are two other similar postings that come to mind:  this one and this one featuring my wife and sister-in-law from 2016, and this one from 2010 featuring my son and another sister-in-law.

Taiwan 2024 - Manhole Cover in Museum Area

...and this was in the middle of the sidewalk.  Must've taken a cue from the Japanese, as they're known for creating a multitude of unique designs for manhole covers throughout their cities.

Taiwan 2024 - Banyan Strands in Museum Area

This was over the sidewalk leading from the museum to the main temple.  Reminded me of this post from back in 2019...

Taiwan 2024 - Museum Grounds, Entrance Gate / In a Police Car #2

After spending some time with the Calla lilies we went with Chenjean's brother to this museum, but found it closed.  No matter...there were plenty of good photographic opportunities.

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The second time I ended up in a police car also happened in the wee hours of the morning, though this time it was in the front seat as opposed to being caged in the back.

It was almost 1:00 a.m. and I was going home from a friend's apartment.  It was cold outside, so I hunkered down for the two-mile walk.  I hadn't gone far - about a quarter-mile - when I noticed a police car parked in a small parking lot to the right.  I was a little inebriated and underage, so did my best to walk by without attracting any undue attention.  That became a moot point, however, because when I got close it was obvious that the officer was asleep!  His engine was running, but he was slouched over in the driver's seat with his head resting against the window.

I thought OK, don't have to worry about him, so walked on.

A little further down the road another police car pulled up alongside and asked me what I was doing out so late.  I was 15 years old at the time but probably looked about twelve, so wasn't surprised at the question.  I answered simply that I was at a friend's place and was heading home, and had Mom's permission to be out.  I mentioned something else, though.  Told him that down the road there was a police car running with the officer sleeping inside.  The cop's eyebrows shot up and he said thanks, speeding off in that direction.

About five minutes later the second cop came back to where I was walking, and offered me a ride home!  I didn't think of it at the time but, as the officer explained it to me, depending on which way the wind was blowing, the officer may not have been asleep at all, but unconscious or dead due to CO poisoning!  That's why he sped off the way he did.  Turns out the officer was OK - just sleeping one the job - but in appreciation he said to hop in the front seat so there I was, riding in the front seat of this Orange police car making small talk with my new friend.

But it didn't last long, and we didn't make it all the way home after all.  We were going down 16th street about five blocks from Chapman (where we lived) when a light flashed on the dash and a loud tone sounded.  Immediately the officer turned on his overheads, said something on the radio, and gunned the accelerator.  Evidently this he did reflexively.  Then, remembering that he had a passenger, he glanced at me and jammed on the brakes, explaining that he had an urgent call and, sorry, but he had to let me out.  I told him thanks, got out, and watched as he flew down the wide empty street with the pretty red and blue lights on (but no siren).

Walking the remaining three blocks home, I was frankly a little disappointed that the adventure came so close to getting even more interesting, but was cut short by his realization that I, a civilian, was in the front seat with him.  Looked in the newspaper the next day but didn't see anything spectacular, so thankfully whatever happened must not have been that serious.

Taiwan 2024 - Calla Lily Farm, Another Strange Chicken / In a Police Car #1

Since we saw how interesting the chicken was in yesterday's post, I kept my eye out for more strange birds and captured this guy in a frame of its own.

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On several occasions I found myself on the inside of a police car.  The first time was when a friend named Doug and I were walking the streets of Orange in the wee hours of the morning.  A 13-year-old kid certainly couldn't get by with doing such a thing nowadays, but this was a time when the world was a less dangerous place for risk-takers like us.  Back then it was weekend routine for us to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night with a friend and go roaming, exploring a seemingly different world cloaked in darkness and quiet.

We'd been out for a while and, growing bolder because we'd not yet been caught, took one of the busier streets (16th) to head back to the house.  When a police car slowed down next to us we got a little nervous and adopted a more purposeful gait while trying to act nonchalant, as if it were perfectly normal for us to be walking around at two in the morning.  Having none of that, the officer stopped us and asked what we were doing out at that hour.

"We were just heading home, sir."

"What are you doing out this late, boys?"

"Just walking around, sir."

Evidently he found this to be an inadequate excuse, so told us to hop in the back of the car.  Doug and I were totally quiet on our way to the clink, not having any idea what would happen when we got there.  Would they put us in jail?  Would we be fingerprinted?  I'd gone there recently as a Boy Scout to get my fingerprinting merit badge, so knew what that was all about.  Would they take our picture?  Would this little excursion go on our permanent record somewhere?  Occasionally we glanced at each other with these questions in mind as the street lights created ominous shadows in our caged space as we rode along.

After arriving they deposited us into a little room where they called our parents.  Yes I was a little nervous but, strangely, not afraid.  OK so we're here, what's done is done.  Dad's going to get the news, and I'm in trouble.  We'll see where it goes from here.

Imagine my surprise when, after calling Dad, the desk sergeant chuckled.  Seeing my raised eyebrows, he told me that when he called to tell him that his son was at the police station after being picked up, Dad asked, "Which one?"  By then at least one of my older brothers (probably Allan) was a familiar face around there.

So Dad picked me up, and that's all there was to it.  No arrest for curfew violation (if there was one), no fingerprinting, no booking photo.  Just a couple of kids out when they shouldn't have been.  I got grounded for a couple of weeks.

Taiwan 2024 - Calla Lily Farm, Tea House Entrance with Unusual Chicken

Came across this tea house as we wandered the property, and I couldn't resist capturing these colors.  Being with a small group provided its share of distractions, so the strange chicken wasn't even noticed until we were ready to move on.  Made a pretty good cropped-in image of its own, though:

Taiwan 2024 - Calla Lily Farm, Red and Yellow Flower Against Gradient Background

While I had the flower separated into its own layer, thought it might look good against a gradient background with the complement colors of green and purple (-ish), then make a bookmark per below.  Looks like there's room for a little lettering at the bottom:

Taiwan 2024 - Calla Lily Farm, Red and Yellow Flower Against Gray Background

This is another flower that I found interesting.  The background was very busy, so the flower was extracted in its own layer against a 50% gray background.  Original pic below: