Sometimes you travel thousands of miles from home to see something amazing. And from time to time something like this shows up in your yard.
That’s exactly what happened on Friday. “What’s the aurora forecast for tonight?” I asked a friend who deals with these things. “Amazing,” he said. He wasn’t lying. At 9:30 p.m., my husband and I went out to the backyard to check the sky – there was only hazy light pollution on the northern horizon. But just an hour later the sky exploded.
I didn’t think twice about which camera to use to capture the event because I already had a SIM card in the Pixel 8A – it arrived a few days ago right after the announcement. I handed my husband the Pixel 8 Pro; he left his iPhone XR at home without night mode. The rippling lights were visible even to the naked eye, but in our photos the sky came alive with green and purple. This put to shame the faint spot we saw on our flight to Reykjavik, Iceland last year.
I still can’t get over it when I see it in my yard.
We had everything on our side that cold night in Iceland. The sky was clear; our tour boat in the bay made the city lights stay far behind us. I had the excellent Xiaomi 13 Pro in my hand, ready to photograph – but there was nothing to see.
The sky just wasn’t talking. As a consolation, the ship’s crew handed out plastic cups of aquavit. We did our best, we thought, and at least we saw that one light from the plane. Then, just over a year later, incredibly, we saw the light show of our lives right in our backyard. Life is funny.
The next day was exceptionally sunny and warm, so I made a last-minute decision to take my two-year-old to the most beautiful sandy beach in West Seattle. It was the kind of day that reminds you why you have to live here through months of darkness and drizzle; from our little patch of artificial sandy shore, we had views of the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and downtown Seattle. A small armada of sailboats was approaching from the north. We went down at low tide and I watched my son dip his bare feet into the salt water for the first time.
The thing is, core memories are such that sometimes you just stumble upon them. Sometimes you just want to spend a completely average morning by the water or a night at home eating ice cream and playing Diablo, and boom – you come face to face with a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
The Pixel 8A is also completely dustproof, and I was grateful for that on the beach.
I tend to disregard phone cameras because they are all good enough. “The best camera is the one you have with you,” etc. This applies to 90 percent of the things we do every day. But in these crucial moments of memory, having a camera that can do the scene justice really matters.
The Pixel 8A is the camera I had with me this weekend; it’s far from the most expensive phone I have on hand, but it got the job done. Not every budget phone can take a good portrait mode photo of a toddler running around in the surf having the time of his life. Not every budget phone can take a decent photo of the night sky. I have more tests with the Pixel 8A, and a full review is forthcoming. In the meantime, I’m grateful he has a camera that can keep up.
Photography: Allison Johnson / The Verge
Credit : www.theverge.com
