Critical time | Scene Through the Lens

The Krall painting above is one of six 12-by-8-foot temporary mural walls created by six local artists with the collective title, “To the Polls.” The biannual, nonpartisan mural project created with Mural Arts Philadelphia and curator Conrad Benner (who is also the founder of StreetsDept.com) will be in the park through Election Day “to rally Philadelphia around civic participation through the act of voting.”

There is a saying among photographers (often attributed to Chase Jarvis) that the “best camera is the one you have with you.”

I had two cameras with me on Saturday when I saw the murals. One was my digital mirrorless SLR and the other, the smartphone I always have with me.

I’d seen the six murals being painted over the past few weeks and decided which one I wanted to photograph. It was the one in full shade with the tower of City Hall behind it bathed in straight-on full-frontal late-afternoon sunlight.

Our brains compensate for that difference in brightness, but I knew from experience that the five or six f/stop difference in exposure between the two objects would be tough for my camera to handle. But I had seen my phone more easily render similar scenes.

I mention all this because I’ve been thinking a lot about smart phone pictures in the past few days since the Space Weather Prediction Center issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch for last Thursday night.

I was aware the solar activity could create an opportunity for those of us living in the non-polar parts of the country to actually witness the northern lights with our naked eye, but honestly figured it would be like the many meteor showers, perihelion comets, shuttle orbits or planetary elongations and conjunctions: I’d look but wouldn’t see. Last Thursday was the same, and I was indoors when my daughter texted me, “It’s happening. Go out and look!” I grabbed my phone (to use the compass to make sure I was facing in the right direction) but didn’t see anything.

I reported back to her, and she sent me a picture she had just taken with her phone. It was amazing.

She only lives about a mile away from me, so I figured it must be my eyes. I concentrated really hard but could only make out a faint tinge of color beyond the trees. I pointed my phone to make a photo to show her that it wasn’t happening in my neighborhood (!)

The second I lifted my phone up I had my Aha! moment.

Decades ago I was in northern Minnesota and saw how beautiful the undulating northern lights are in person. My camera then couldn’t do it justice. It just didn’t look the same. Now, it’s the other way around. And somehow it bothers me. (And it’s not my eyes!)

My smartphone photo of this extraordinary once-in-lifetime event is not what I saw. And, I guess most of the thousands of others who shared their phone’s images on social media didn’t see it with their own eyes either. At least those living and looking along my circle of latitude.

Cameras - with long exposures and tripods or with flash - have long been able to see more than our eyes. But now that smart phones are more computer than camera - call it AI if you want - the pictures they make are enhanced.

I read somewhere that the increased light capturing and image enhancing features of phone advancement is driven by people taking selfies in dimly lit bars and clubs. Or pictures of their food in dark restaurants. I’m all for the forward march of technology. I have been a photographer long enough to benefit from the progress so I am not going to begrudge anyone liking how much better they - or their food - looks under less than ideal lighting conditions.

We long ago discarded the maxim “the camera never lies” but this seemingly universal acceptance that what you see is no longer what you get cannot be good for the future trustworthiness of photojournalism.

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: