I’m a member of a Flickr group called Mobile Landscapes which is for landscape photographs taken on mobile phones. In some respects this is a faintly ludicrous concept, as landscape photography is traditionally regarded as a contemplative art, where you take your time in choosing the optimum composition, wait for the best light, and often involves the use of a tripod, larger cameras, quite often medium or large format. But of course you can take landscapes on any camera, it’s as much about the right time and place as it is the equipment (unless of course you’re looking to sell prints or publish a book, etc).

However, sometimes you don’t have a thundering great camera, lens and tripod to hand. We’d popped out for a lovely meal at the superb Crab and Lobster pub in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight and as we were about to leave we decided to take a quick walk down to the adjacent seashore. The sun was setting and the sky was various pastel shades, so we sat and watched the flotilla of ships on the horizon, presumably having left Southampton on the tide and were now heading off into the Channel. Even thought hey were several miles away, we could hear a gentle thump-thump of their marine diesels on the deserted shore. Noticing that the battery on my phone was virtually dead, I decided to get as many photos as I could before it expired, as it seemed a shame to let the lovely scene in front of me be lost to my memory.

This is probably the pick of the bunch, inspired very much by the contemporary landscape genre seen in the photography magazines every month. I’d love to have had my 16-35 mm lens and my 70-300 to pick out the little rowing boat in one of the pools, but that’s life.