When Rachel Jones Ross (@rachel_jones_ross) isn’t traveling, she can be found exploring her home of the Canadian Rockies with her camera. Recently, the Alpha Imaging Collective member documented 30 days in her life as a full-time creative using her Sony Xperia 5 III, and she shared the entire experience through Instagram posts and stories. We connected with her to hear more about all she captured in those 30 days, how she used the multi-talented smartphone in harsh shooting conditions and what she learned about storytelling by shooting with the Xperia 5 III.

What’s it like to explore an ice cave? We connect with Rachel Jones Ross of the Alpha Collective about documenting 30 days in her life with the Sony Xperia 5 III.

High Dynamic Range For Ice Cave Exploration

For the project, Ross posted her creative experiences every day for 30 days, creating a compilation video at the end. Throughout those 30 days, the experience that stuck out to Ross the most were the treks out to the ice caves along the Icefields Parkway. The ice caves in the Canadian Rockies usually involve long hikes and are difficult to access, and Ross documented the experience with her Xperia 5 III. She couldn’t believe how easily she was able to create successful images using the device.

“Working at a place like an ice cave is a really high dynamic range situation,” she explains. “When you're at the back of an ice cave and you're looking toward the opening of the glacier, there's a lot of light shining in, but there's very little light that reaches the back of the cave. So when I'm taking photos with my professional camera, I would bracket that and take multiple images and then stitch those multiple images together. But with the phone, I didn't need to do that because the phone actually handles high dynamic range really, really well. So it was an impressive feature and I think those photos stood out to me not only for the experience, just being there, but also what I was capturing and how unique it was to be able to take photos with my phone and not have to do a whole bunch of processing on them. It did a really good job of capturing that high dynamic range.”

Satisfaction & Simplicity

Ross, who has a complete Sony Alpha kit she uses for her photography, found using the Xperia 5 III to be an easy creative transition. She even found herself creating with both her professional camera and the Xperia, and captured this special timelapse that she’s had in mind for a long time. She created the first sequence in the cinemagraph using her Sony Alpha 1 with the Sony 55mm f/1.8 lens by setting up a tripod and shooting a timelapse sequence of the clouds, then masking it in a still image of the train. She filmed the second sequence shooting the Sony Xperia 5 III hand-held in slow motion mode. “There is a certain sense of creative satisfaction that comes from using the Sony Alpha 1 to create a mix of still and moving images, and a simplicity in using the Sony Xperia 5 III,” she says.

“I think that for me, the camera being so similar of an experience to my Alpha cameras was really appealing to me. Also that I got to edit my photos and my videos right in my phone. I could use editing software if I wanted to, but I did that all on my phone because I was doing it every day. That really appealed to me that I had so much control over the look and feel of the photos and the videos that were coming out of my phone.”

Ross, who switched over to the Xperia 5 III from an iPhone, understands the struggle to make the change. “Yeah it’s a big move, but both the photo and video capabilities make that very worthwhile for me. Not only is it being able to have such good control over the content that I was creating with my phone, but also the capabilities that the camera on the phone has, like the high dynamic range, makes it very worth it. Plus the interface is very similar to the Sony camera, all of those things make it easier to switch systems.”

A New Approach To Storytelling

Ross, who is always out exploring, hiking and taking photos, wasn’t sure what it would be like documenting the entire experience with the Xperia 5 III. While she’s a creative and this is what she does all the time, presenting her life each day for 30 days was a new challenge. She found that she learned a lot about storytelling and the way she presents content on Instagram. “It did turn out to be a lot more than I thought it would be in terms of my time and how I tell stories with my phone,” she explains. “The way you tell stories on Instagram and how you create reels, they actually do take a lot of time. It’s one thing to capture images behind the scenes, it’s another to bring it all together into a coherent story.”

She continues, “So I think the project overall actually taught me a little bit more about telling stories, even though this is what I do all the time. Having to do it every day taught me a lot more about storytelling and how I put stories together. It was an interesting reflection for me. Your phone is really the one camera that you have with you all the time. Having a lot from my professional cameras all tucked into a phone is ideal.”

Having the Xperia 5 III as a tool made her think differently about her photography and ultimately expanded her creativity. “There are a lot of times when I go out to explore that I don't actually take my big cameras with me. I will just take my phone, because I'm not planning on doing photography, or maybe I want to travel a little bit lighter, or maybe it's just an exploration and I don't want the extra weight in my backpack. Sometimes I just don't have my cameras with me so having a phone with such a good camera in it is an absolutely huge plus.”

See more of Rachel Jones Ross’ work on Instagram @rachel_jones_ross.

See more about the Xperia 5 III HERE.

See more about the Xperia lineup HERE and HERE.