Photography has always been a medium to preserve moments and memories, but for some artists, it serves as a source of inspiration and a window into the past. One such artist is the renowned filmmaker Wes Anderson, known for his distinct and visually captivating cinematic style, which draws upon the work of French photographer Jacques Henri-Lartigue to infuse his films. While the two artists work in different visual mediums, Henri-Lartigue’s photographic compositions and Anderson’s cinematic worlds share distinct visuals capturing a sense of joy and playfulness.

One of the most striking elements of Henri-Lartigue’s work is his fondness for shooting everyday life as if it were a cinematic scene. His use of composition, perspective, and framing often transformed mundane occurrences into captivating visual narratives. When exploring Anderson’s filmography, one can see the clear influence of Henri-Lartigue.  The symmetry and meticulous attention to detail in Anderson’s frames mirror the composition and visual storytelling of Henri-Lartigue’s photographs. Anderson’s characters often exist in worlds that are reminiscent of the past, and his use of costume and set design draws from the same well of inspiration as Henri-Lartigue. We can even see Anderson literally place Henri-Lartigue’s photographs into the scene.

In the video above, brought to us by Alex Kilbee on his YouTube page, The Photographic Eye, we can see this fusion of photography and cinema. Jacques Henri-Lartigue’s influence on Wes Anderson is a testament to the timelessness of visual storytelling. Both artists share a profound love for the aesthetics of the past, celebrating the beauty of ordinary moments and capturing them in a way that transcends time. Henri-Lartigue’s photographs are windows into the past, and Anderson’s films are captivating worlds that never existed but feel as if they could have. 

The artsXchange program, a collaboration between River Arts Alliance (RAA) and the Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM), continues on Thursday, October 19, 2023, from 6:30-8 p.m. This month’s event will be led by photographer and RAA member Pete Mutschler.

Taking good pictures is easy these days. Creating great images is much harder, but well within the reach of most people with a cell phone and a computer. There is a lot of conversation in the photographic world about the use of digital tools and how much manipulation is appropriate. Photoshop and similar programs have given us incredibly powerful tools to adjust, combine, and manipulate existing images. With artificial intelligence, individuals can now create photographs of things that don’t really exist.

For this workshop, local photographer Pete Mutschler will walk you through the basics of where technology fits in your efforts to create great images and how you can use it to create your own style. Included in the program will be a discussion on how some of the great photographers in the past may have used technology and where tools, such as those driven by artificial intelligence, may lead us.

We will be working on actual images during the workshop, so feel free to bring some of your own (on a flash drive) if you are willing to share.

The event is free for members of RAA or MMAM and is included with museum admission for others. Registration is required, and space is limited to 25 attendees. To register, visit riverartsalliance.org/september-2023-artsxchange-registration. The museum is located at 800 Riverview Drive in Winona.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Learn more about River Arts Alliance at www.riverartsalliance.org. Learn more about the Minnesota Marine Art Museum at www.mmam.org.

Photographers tend to take two different sides on AI imagery. Some say that it’s not photography. Others embrace it and try to learn the technology to add to their skill sets. In our interviews on this website, we’ve discussed lots of different opinions that photographers have on AI. That’s the center of the latest Magnum Photos Square print sale being done in collaboration with the World Press Photo Organization. We spoke to photographer Anna Bedynska — who beautifully stated the difference between real documentary and AI imagery.

For this Square Print Sale, Magnum Photos and the World Press Photo Organization are taking a stand with real photographers to celebrate the difference between human photography and AI-generated imagery. You can support this mission with a purchase of a print at the Magnum Photo Shop.

“A documentary photograph encapsulates what someone has observed, contemplated, meticulously created, and redefined,” says photographer Anna Bedynska. “It is a synthesis of someone’s perspective point of view, a profound synthesis of thoughts, emotions, and creative choices. We enter a dialogue through photography between the photographer, the person photographed, and the viewer.” She continues to state that we combine a personal experience as a viewer when we document what’s in front of us. Ultimately, it’s not just about capturing the world as it happens — but also showing a unique perspective.

“Each camera click is an exploration, a deep dive into another person’s worldview, making the photograph a captivating tapestry of human perception and worldview. This process, this dance between creativity and reality, transforms an ordinary image into a captivating story that is a trustworthy reflection of a real and true story with which the viewer can identify. It is a fusion of different minds and points of view converging to create something unique, trustworthy, thought-provoking, and priceless. The process of searching for meaning and truth in documentary photography is a value in itself that AI is not likely to give.”

Anna Bedynska

About the sale, the images in “Writing with Light” are some of the last moments a viewer might be sure is being created by a human being, according to Anna. Her image for the sale was shot with a Canon 5D Mk II — and it shows proof that a human being shot it. The photo itself has an almost ghostly and ethereal feel that makes me think of an AI-based world of some sort. Most importantly, it makes me feel something and I’m sure it will do the same for someone else.

Like many other photographers, Anna thinks that something needs to be done about authentication. “I think that Authentication and Verification, whether the picture is AI-generated or created by a human hand, is crucial, as is the security of Data Privacy,” she explains to us. “There should be a Penalization system for violating personal, creative, and intellectual rights, and these policies should be homogenous and global.” For many photographers, she’s describing a very ideal world.

All photos by Anna Bedynska. Used with permission. Check out her website and Instagram for more.

Photography-on-the-Net, one of the original digital photography forums and perhaps one of the most prominent of the time, is shutting down at the end of 2023.

Running continuously since April of 2001, Photography-on-the-Net has acted as a digital gathering place for digital camera enthusiasts, professionals, hobbyists, and generally anyone interested in photography. The site operates a number of forums on gear as well as places to discuss photos and techniques. Photography-on-the-Net also operated a camera gear marketplace and a massive photo gallery of more than a quarter million images that can be used to browse the results from specific cameras — down to specific settings.

While the forums have been in operation for more than two decades, that will end this year.

The site’s founder Pekka Saarinen published the news on the site earlier this month. The post, spotted by Canon Rumors, paints a picture of a once thriving community that has fallen out of popularity due to a number of factors, not the least of which is a decline in general interest in digital photography and the growth of social media.

“There is no one reason for the decline of digital camera, there are several. Better mobile cameras killing people’s interest to heavy and expensive systems like SLR with lots of lenses. Photojournalists use iPhones, photographers get less hiring opportunities, families and friends use mobile devices. Some special interest shooters like bird and wedding photographers, sports and action shooters can not really work with phones, but they are a minority. Image quality does not matter much to 99% of people, when viewed on mobile all is sufficient,” Saarinen writes.

But it’s not just the lessening interest in photo equipment that Saarinen believes has led to the decline of Photography-on-the-Net.

“Facebook was founded 2004, three years after POTN. Twitter was started 2006. Instagram was founded 2010. Snapchat 2011. Discord 2015, Tik Tok 2016. All those multi-billion dollar companies have conquered the market, created the social media as we know it, intentionally aiming to addict by algorithms, put people into own bubbles, track you to target ads, lose content validity in short time so that new content gets created constantly. Some of them reduce message lengths thus directing young people to short attention span and think less about complete sentences. Photos are shared via social media apps, Whatsapp and cloud services. This trend has sped up in last few years, and AI will change it all again. Soon people won’t have to write or create anything — it’s all done for them,” Saarinin says.

“Sad truth is that there is no place for conventional forums any more with the recent generations. Traffic is down. Enthusiasm is down. Mood is down. Discussion is down.”

The lessened interest and fewer visits adds to an issue where, according to Saarinen, Google is serving fewer ads to forums in general.

“Google delivers fewer and fewer ads in forums (most ad slots are empty, meaning we don’t have even a chance to get anything), so for a long time I’ve had to pay most of the server costs from my own pocket, even with some occasional donations which I appreciate,” he says.

“Even if financially this wasn’t a burden, I do not have time or interest to code by request or set up servers (I’ve put thousands of hours for POTN during the years). Members can get very demanding, there’s no real joy in this ‘service’ for me any more. I do not really shoot photos any more, I have other interests and a profession in music.”

The site’s founder says that the only “logical option” remaining is to shut the site down by the end of the year, though an exact time has not yet been determined. Saarinin says that he is not planning to keep a read only version of the site up either, as that still incurs server costs. Instead, he will “pull the plug” and the site — and its contents — will be taken offline.

“I apologize to our members (some have been here over 20 years) that the site can not go on, but nothing lasts forever. I fully intended to keep this running, but it’s not a viable solution any more. All I can say I’m sorry for the situation and mourn loss of a great community. All things come to an end, and it is time to move on.”

From a rodent’s optic nerve and the venomous fangs of a small tarantula to auto-fluorescing hairs on a leaf, the images winning the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition are luminously colorful works of art revealing the artistic side of science.

For its 49th edition of photos showing the beauty of a world that can only be seen with a microscope, each image was judged not only for its scientific technique but also its artistry. The winners were selected from among 1,900 entries from 72 countries and a wide array of scientific disciplines.

This year’s first place was awarded to Hassanain Qambari, assisted by Jayden Dickson of the Lions Eye Institute (a center for ophthalmological care and scientific research), for his vivid image of a rodent optic nerve head showing astrocytes (yellow), contractile proteins (red) and retinal vasculature (green). The colorful image provides an important contribution to the study and reversal of diabetic retinopathy, which affects one in five persons with diabetes worldwide.

“The competition not only celebrates the participants’ hard work and passion but may also draw and inspire young scientists to pursue a career in STEM. It certainly inspired me,” said Qambari.

All the images of the top 10 winners, honorable mentions and Images of Distinction can be found on the Nikon Small World website.

Auto-fluorescing defensive hairs covering the leaf surface of Eleagnus angustifolia exposed to UV light.

The venomous fangs of a small tarantula inspire terror at this size.

This is a trichinella cyst in pork muscle. (Trichinella is a parasitic worm known to cause trichinosis).

Stamen and stigma develop inside a Hibiscus flower bud in Bangalore, India.

Slime mold (Comatricha nigra) shows its capillitial fibers through its translucent peridium.

Cuckoo wasp stands on a flower at Tanta University Department of Zoology in Tanta, Egypt.

Ostracods flit through algae, surrounded by bubbles.

Muscle architecture of an evaginating tapeworm (Taenia crassiceps cysticercus) at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Department of Immunology, Mexico City.

The beauty of Monograph—a new art book by acclaimed Nigerian and New Yorker photographer, filmmaker, stylist, and creative director Andrew Dosunmu—lies in the uncanny juxtapositions of distinct realms. Wholly separate images shown side-by-side form their own dynamic relationships. Two people in different portraits appear to size each other up across facing pages; on the road in Lagos, a young girl flashes a smile in the direction of a portrait of a man, pausing briefly, his mesh shirt resting on his head. They may never have crossed each other’s paths, but here they do.

Andrew Dosunmu

In Monograph, collages from Dosunmu’s work as a stylist casually bump up against his work as a fashion photographer, and stills from his films (including Beauty and Mother of George) and music videos (among the musicians he’s worked with: Isaac Hayes, Bob Marley, Aaron Neville, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu). They all naturally blend into the images that are at the book’s core: pictures that span roughly 20 years, from the early 2000s to the present, a roving eye that remaps the world. Page to page, we jump in quick succession between Quito and Accra, Chicha and the Port of Spain, Manila and Sudan.

“I love both that seamlessness of brothers and the dissimilarities—that’s what I’m attracted to when I’m photographing,” Dosunmu, who grew up in Nigeria and England, says in a café in his Crown Heights neighborhood. A prime example is a spread of two facing pictures from Jamaica. It’s as if Dosonmu’s camera peels away the walls, so that two interior spaces are suddenly joined, like mirror reflections. Famous and familiar faces, most not credited by name, slip into these pages discreetly—a portrait of André 3000 pops up as surprisingly as the Outkast musician himself and his flute might, in random airports and settings all over the world. Even when working on fashion commissions, Dosunmu prefers to find models on location. “It was always about real people,” he says. “Going to India, Senegal, Vietnam, wherever, and casting people off the streets.”

Zionsville is home to numerous businesses, and one business owner is carrying on his father’s legacy each day he walks into work. 

Cripe Photography, located at 45 N. Main St., will celebrate 50 years of business this month. The business, owned by Bill Cripe, was started by his father, William Cripe Sr., in 1973. 

The photography business will host an open house from 3 to 6 p.m. on Nov. 2 to celebrate the milestone of 50 years in the making. The studio will be open to the community as a way to get to know more residents and let people know what the studio is all about. Light refreshments and giveaways will also be provided. 

The studio’s location formerly was Cripe’s father’s business, Bill’s Barbershop, and became the Cripe Photography studio residents know and love in the 1980s. 

“In the beginning, my father was photographing weddings in the area, and he eventually turned it into a full-time business shooting seniors, families and children,” Cripe said.

Bill grew up in the field and has had a camera in his hand from a young age. His mother Ann (Birdie) worked at Zionsville Community High School for 35 years as an art teacher and did the yearbook

“I helped (my mom) cover stuff at the school and shot my first wedding professionally when I was 13 years old,” Cripe said. “I put myself through college by photographing events.”

Cripe graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Ball State University. He worked for Herff Jones before he took over his father’s business in 1990, working collaboratively with him for about two years before his father retired. 

“Our family has lived in Zionsville for many generations,” Cripe said. “The community response to our business has been wonderful. Since my family has been doing this for a long time, we know a lot of families and people in the area and have had a wonderful business to grow into.”

At its start, Cripe Photography offered senior portraits, family photos and children shoots. About 15 years ago, the business transitioned out of traditional portrait shooting and now works only with schools in the area. 

“Many changes in the industry led our business to change directions,” Cripe said. “We saw the chance to grow our business by working with schools, and once we got involved with nearby districts, we loved it.”

Cripe Photography works with many school districts, including Zionsville, Noblesville, Carmel, Westfield, Mill Creek and more, taking photos for yearbooks and sporting events. 

“A lot of people remember us for what we used to offer years ago,” Cripe said. “They have no idea we transitioned to school photography to provide photos for schools.”

Stephanie Keehn, who works alongside Cripe at the studio, said the company loves servicing schools and building relationships with school districts in the surrounding areas. 

“Whether it is Zionsville or any surrounding district, we enjoy getting to know the students and administration in the schools,” Keehn said. “When you are servicing schools for as many years as we have, you get to know the kids and recognize them outside of the school setting because you have been taking their picture for years.”

Cripe and Keehn said their goal for the future of Cripe Photography is to continue providing services that big companies cannot. 

“We are a small company that is essentially competing with bigger companies,” Cripe said. “The biggest difference between us and them is the customer service we provide.”

Cripe said now that his two children are grown, most of his time is spent focusing on the business. He is also actively involved in a few local clubs and organizations. 

“If anything, we just want people to know that we love what we do,” Keehn said. “We hope to continue to grow and get our name out there for other school districts to see.” 

For more information about Cripe Photography, visit cripephoto.com 

The Bill Cripe File

Name: Bill (William) Cripe

Residence: “My family has lived in Zionsville my whole life and my kids are the fifth generation to grow up in my house.”

Children: Carly Decker and Liam Cripe

Favorite thing to photograph: “I love shooting with elementary students because they are so darn cute and always excited for picture day.”

Life Motto: “Enjoy today.”

Favorite restaurants in Zionsville: “I try to frequent a lot of different businesses but some of my favorites are Cobblestone and Tipsy Mermaid.”

Have you ever gazed up at the night sky and felt a profound sense of wonder? The universe above us is a canvas painted with stars, planets, and cosmic phenomena waiting to be explored. If you’ve ever wanted to capture the magic of the celestial realm through the lens of your camera, then join us for an enchanting journey into the art of celestial photography.

Unlocking the Secrets of the Cosmos
In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, it’s easy to forget the celestial ballet that unfolds above us each night. The Celestial Photography Workshop aims to rekindle your connection with the cosmos by providing you with the tools and techniques to capture its beauty like never before.

What to Expect
**1. Introduction to Celestial Photography: The workshop kicks off with a journey through the basics of celestial photography. Learn about the equipment needed, from entry-level cameras to advanced telescopic lenses, and how to choose the right gear for your stargazing adventures.

**2. Mastering Night Sky Composition: Discover the art of composing your shots against the backdrop of the night sky. From framing the moon to capturing the brilliance of distant stars, this session will guide you in creating visually stunning compositions.

**3. Long Exposure Techniques: Delve into the magic of long exposure photography. Uncover the secrets of capturing the trails of stars as they paint their journey across the canvas of the cosmos, creating mesmerizing images that tell the story of the night.

**4. Editing for Cosmic Brilliance: Learn the post-processing techniques that will elevate your celestial images to new heights. From enhancing star clusters to bringing out the subtle details of distant galaxies, discover how to make your photos truly shine.

Why Celestial Photography?
Capturing the wonders beyond our atmosphere isn’t just about taking pictures; it’s about forging a connection with the universe. Through the lens, we glimpse the beauty of distant planets, the ethereal glow of nebulas, and the dance of celestial bodies. Each photograph becomes a personal journey into the vastness of space.

Meet Your Guide
Our workshop is led by seasoned astrophotographers who have traversed the night skies with their cameras. Drawing on years of experience, they bring a wealth of knowledge to help you navigate the challenges of celestial photography and unleash your creative potential.

Join Us Under the Stars
Whether you’re a budding photographer or an experienced stargazer looking to refine your skills, the Celestial Photography Workshop invites you to join a community of like-minded individuals. Together, we’ll embark on a celestial odyssey, capturing the wonders that adorn our night sky.

Embrace the Cosmos
Don’t miss this opportunity to immerse yourself in the magic of celestial photography. Pack your camera, set up your tripod, and get ready to capture the wonders that await beyond our atmosphere. Let’s turn our lenses to the stars and create images that tell the timeless story of the cosmos. See you under the celestial canopy!

The Google Pixel smartphones enjoy a well-earned reputation as photographic tools. With the release of the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, Google took the photo game one step further by substantially increasing the amount of light the Pixel cameras can collect. As a photographer, this excites me.

The focus of this review is going to be on the $1,000 Pixel 8 Pro model exclusively because the first thing that’s obvious about the Pixel 8 phones is that photographers will want the model with the best camera system, and that’s the Pro. The standard Pixel 8 does get the same benefits in regards to an improved ultra-wide and main camera but it’s the 8 Pro that also gains an updated 112mm f/2.8 telephoto lens.

You also need the 8 Pro to unlock the “pro” camera tools which give you access to things like white balance, shutter speed control, ISO adjustments, and more. Perhaps most importantly though, the Pro model gives you the ability to shoot RAW and JPEG files that maintain the maximum 48 megapixels of its cameras.

This does mean that you’re carrying around a phone with a 6.7″ screen, albeit a very nice-looking one. Featuring a 1344×2992 dot display with a variable frame rate from one to 120hz, the Pixel 8 Pro screen is bright and sharp with its peak brightness capable of 2400 nits. I found the touch controls to be responsive and rarely had to repeat an action or button press.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: The Cameras

Compared to the last model, everything about the three cameras on the 8 Pro has gotten either brighter or larger — or both. The ultra-wide camera has a dramatic-looking 11mm equivalent focal length. Couple that with a brighter f/1.95 maximum aperture and you get a camera that can even tackle astral photos. Compared to the Pixel 7 Pro, this ultra-wide lens is brighter, wider, and with four times the megapixels. Quite the upgrade indeed.

The Pixel 8 main camera is similar to its predecessor, featuring the same 50-megapixel count, and 25mm field of view, but it adds more light with a brighter f/1.68. A slightly shallower depth of field is possible and the image quality in low-light situations is improved.

Lastly, the telephoto lens is improved with a brighter f/2.8 aperture that still pushes out excellent 48-megapixel images. I found the optical image stabilizer to be very effective while composing shots, and the image quality is substantially better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max telephoto lens.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: Ultra HDR

Google has finally entered into the HDR photo fray but does so with a new proprietary format. Files can now be shot in a P3 color space and when viewed on an appropriate display can show more dynamic range and brighter highlights than before. This couples very nicely with the improved and much brighter screen on the 8 Pro.

However, because we have another new HDR format that needs to be supported by the display community, it’s going to take time to fully appreciate the Pixel 8 photos on various computer and TV platforms — if that ever happens. Regardless, it’s time for Google to integrate HDR photography into its phones and this is a step in the right direction.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: Portrait Mode and Night Sight

Although we have faster apertures across the board, the depth of field is still going to be fairly deep regardless of which lens you use. Modern smartphones rely heavily on detecting your intended subject and then artificially blurring the background with depth maps. The level of realism has steadily improved over the years and the Pixel 8 Pro delivers the best results I’ve seen on a Google phone so far. Unfortunately, the portrait mode does not work with the longer 5x.

It does its best work with human portraits and delivers similar results to the latest iPhone. However, there are often some strange artifacts or parts of an image that are unrealistically cut out from the scene. In time, these bugs can be addressed but for now, the results are tainted with strange occurrences. The iPhone 15 Pro series phones do a great job with family pets but unfortunately, the Pixel 8 Pro portrait mode doesn’t quite mask out the subject as nicely or as seamlessly when it comes to animals. I’d say that Google still has some work to do getting its portrait mode to meet the competition.

Night Sight is the answer to any of your low-light photo challenges. I’ve always found the Night Sight mode to be very effective at tackling darker conditions whilst still maintaining detail and good color accuracy. I love that Night Sight can be used even in bright, contrasty situations where a little more shadow detail might be desirable.

The Pixel 8 Pro in Night Sight mode can maintain the full 48 megapixels of its cameras when many other competitors’ phones would drop down to 12. Night Sight shots have more detail and a more realistic look to their rendering than the competition, too.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: Video Capability

The Pixel 8 cameras have switched to a new way of recording high-quality video by recording at two different sensitivities simultaneously. This is a technology we’ve seen employed on high-end cinema cameras like the Panasonic GH6 and Arri cameras and provides a substantial improvement to the detail recorded in shadows and highlights. There is also HDR capture now with HLG output and the Pixel 8 Pro can now handle more dynamic range than we’ve seen before from Google.

Although the video results still have that classic over-sharpened look that all phones are guilty of, the excellent skin tones and color accuracy really push the Pixel 8 phones higher. Low-light video quality also benefits from the brighter apertures now found on the Pixel cameras. Smartphones are still quite poor when it comes to low-light video quality but the Pixel 8 improvements are enough to give them a slight edge over Apple.

The Pixel 8 Pro can also help filter out annoying noises in your audio like machines running, or traffic noises while enhancing the vocals of whoever is talking to the camera. This is a very handy feature for situations like recording friends inside a busy restaurant or someone talking next to running water and it works very effectively.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: AI is the Future

Google is heavily pushing its AI tools as a standout feature to set itself apart from the competition. We’ve tested things like Magic Eraser before and although the results are pretty rough looking, it takes no skill at all and usually looks fine for social media output. But now Google is offering Magic Editor which allows you to more heavily edit images thanks to the computing power in the cloud.

You can draw around almost any object and the Magic Editor will let you move it, resize it, or delete it completely. Skies can be replaced and even people’s facial expressions can be swapped for other images taken in the same burst. The results are far from instantaneous, however, and there will still be many digital artifacts remaining.

For example, backgrounds that are redrawn behind moved or deleted objects tend more towards impressionism than they do realism. People that are removed will leave their shadows behind and sometimes things like hands will remain after the processing is done. In situations where you have simple backgrounds with clearly separated subjects, the results can be pretty impressive though.

As I’ve said before, even if the results are not convincing upon very close inspection they are absolutely effective in the context of social media and the like. Removing an offending street sign in the background or adding more drama to a dull sky is easy to do and the results are effective. This is a powerful tool for Google because even if the results aren’t perfect now, they will only improve over time.

Google Pixel 8 Pro: A Powerful Tool for Pro and Amateur Alike

The Pixel 8 Pro is a strange device in that it caters to both the photographer who wants to edit RAW files and squeeze out maximum image quality as well as the influencer who wants to easily edit and alter their images before posting to social media — true to life or not.

The new cameras and brighter lenses make a difference and as a result, the 8 Pro is the most powerful photo and video camera Google has ever made. But it doesn’t stop there: the new AI tools and Magic Editor are also a useful addition to anyone’s repertoire, especially if they don’t have the time or the necessary Photoshop skills to go further. The image quality is the best we’ve seen from the Pixel line and competes favorably against the Apple iPhone 15 Pro phones in many regards. As a result, the Pixel 8 Pro is worth taking a look at if you want the best images possible from a smartphone.

Alternatives:

The iPhone 15 Pro Max will provide comparable video capabilities and a similar setup of cameras. The iPhone has excellent portrait mode results and beautiful image quality overall but the Pixel 8 cameras deliver better results. Very few users would consider changing over ecosystems, though.

For those who like to stick with Google’s Android operating system, then the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is probably the best bet. It didn’t do a lot to separate itself from the S22 Ultra, but some well-played upgrades and additions make the Galaxy S23 Ultra hard to pass up for those who like life away from the Cupertino-based giant. Another worthwhile option is the Xioami 13 Pro, but given its lack of North American support, it’s probably not on many people’s radar.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. If you are an Android user and want to prioritize photographic results, the Pixel 8 Pro is the way to go.