This weekend I was at my golf course when I parked my car in the car park and noticed something quite incredible: a field of beautiful wild flowers.

My first thought was dismay as I did not have my DSLR with me. I suddenly though "I need to photograph this". Followed by "I wished I had my 5Dmkiii and 16-35mm f2.8 lens and tripod with me"...which of course I didn't have with me, as I was about to play golf.

Anyway, I decided to take some iPhone images. Not ideal, but better than nothing. As I started snapping away I was actually thinking about how I would compose and shoot with my DSLR. This got me thinking. I just needed to think creatively about how I could do this landscape justice with my iPhone. Yes, the new OS on the iPhone allows you to pan for panoramic images. But I didn't want to do that. I decided to take lots of images of what was in front of me and stitch them together.

So the image you see is a combination of 10 iPhone images that are stitched together in Photoshop Elements. I then created one panoramic JPEG file which I imported into Lightroom. It is in Lightroom that I did my colour correction. I wanted to really emphasise the violet colours of the flowers so I played a lot with the magenta's - you can see even the clouds are slightly tinged with magenta!

I think this is a good example of understanding the link between processing and photographic craft. We have some incredible tools available to us today. Understanding what is possible should open your photographic creativity much more. If you compare with one of the still images I took on the iPhone you will see it has less impact. The angle isn't wide enough for me to convey the scene, the vast landscape, and the fact that this was a field of wild flowers as far as the eye can see. 

This is one of the images 10 images I used to stitch the panorama together. It is ok, but has less impact and drama than the stitched image. 

The other lesson is that "the best camera you have is the one you have with you". I'm not a huge fan of taking photos on the iPhone. But it is all I had with me. Was I going to let the opportunity slip for an amazing landscape? I had to use what I had, and I had to use craft and knowledge to generate the result. 

It's not a perfect photograph, but I think it is a seriously impressive example of what is possible if you think about what you are creating and put your vision into reality with the tools you have available. 

cheers Jon