A fun and creative evening with our smartphones led by Jeanette Lendon, founder, and creative Director of Jet Black Squares, exploring the many opportunities for different images with our ‘camera phones’. Jeanette’s mantra is to see your phone as a camera first and realising its potential to document, create and experiment. I think most of us learnt something new about our phone cameras and settings. 

On Friday morning 8 of us braved the elements and somewhat dull conditions in Exeter City Centre guided by Jeanette Lendon on a Smartphone Safari. We spent a fun morning experimenting – turning our phones upside down, reaching into puddles, taking macro shots of small details and then having a lesson on processing using the Snapseed App over coffee. Rain drops, Autumn leaves and puddles added to the potential for reflections in water and glass shop windows. We attracted quite bit of interest from ‘old and young’ and one little boy was heard to say Mummy ‘What are they doing?” It made us all realise what potential our phone cameras have for producing interesting and unusual images and helped too give us a different vision of Exeter in the rain. A selection of comments from club members….

 Brian ……Fabulous morning. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute

Stella…….what a great morning we had. Certainly, encouraged me to use my old phone. Very informative and inspiring.

Mike………A great workshop this morning. Using the phone upside down provides a great viewpoint.

Rob……in stark contrast to the weather, Jeanette was as bright and cheerful as she had been the previous evening during her excellent presentation of all that we can achieve with a smartphone. Gone are the days when we owned phones which take photos; nowadays, everyone owns a camera which can be used, amongst other things, as a phone. There can be no denying that our antics raised a few eyebrows each of us knelt down and dipped our phones in puddles, pored over a rain-sodden leaves or leaned our phones against shop windows, but Jeanette’s message was, “Wander through any environment with eyes open and you will soon find plenty to capture”. Just as the heavens finally opened, we adjourned to a café where we spent our final 20 minutes of the morning enjoying toasted teacakes and a well-earned cuppa.