Here's a few more night photos from the grounds of the Witte Museum. 
I'm not sure I want to go down this road... Two of the photos above were taken with my new camera-phone.
My thoughts have been all over the place as far as posting camera-phone photos here at all, and if I do, what is my approach?
On the one hand, I could stay low-tech and not use Photoshop on them at all.
Or I could try every trick in the book to get them to look halfway decent, as I tried with these.
If I had a third hand, what choice would it be holding?
Personally, the whole camera-phone thing has me torn.
When I see people pulling them out in situations where they should have known they were going to want photos and could have brought a so-called "real camera", I tend to dismiss them as fools. Holding one up and taking snaps from the 45th row of a concert is an exercise in futility, yet it happens every day.
After all, 80% of the US population owns at least one "real camera" and uses it regularly.
But now that I have one of these tiny toys, and always have it with me unlike my much larger F717, I find that it's a fun way to stay in touch with people and share my life with them as it's happening.
As a serious student of photography, they seem like little more than hightech toys, and yet mine has 1.3 megapixels and the full range of white-balance settings, so it almost matches the state of the art digital cameras from a dozen years ago (if you ignore the little bitty shitty lens and lack of all other controls).
Mine even has a (Micro) SD memory card slot just like it's big brothers.
My dilemma is that I know that in a few years these toys will pack some serious features, and while I'm getting into the game at a nice point in their evolution I also don't take them or the resulting photos very seriously. Yet.
Do I post phone-camera photos on Views Of Texas once in a while, in the spirit of sharing what I see and do?
Or just when they come out really well, or there's no other way to get the shot?
Or do I explore all of my options with no attitude or preconceptions?
A little help, people?
There's no wrong answers, so please comment freely.
3 comments:
I like the camera phone pictures that you took, they came out looking phenomenal (did i spell that correctly?), especially for being taken with a camera phone! (I won't tell which ones they are) *grin* I like how you can tell in the photograph of the statue that it is night. With all of the foliage that grows around that spot you seem to have captured the best of it. I also think that your picture of the trees actually looks better than they do in person.
- Calley
If I had a third hand, what choice would it be holding?
Maybe a beverage...?
I've posted two photos from my camera phone, both taken under atrocious conditions in a place that didn't allow "professional" cameras. (The venue's website said "any", so I left the arsenal at home.) My 'third option' was to make the camera phone's photos look like they came from a crappy little camera phone, and photoshopped them in such a way that actually emphasized their noise, banding, poor colour reproduction and small dynamic range. The idea is to make the inherent limitations into its strength.
If I don't need to use a camera phone, I won't. The use of a phone's camera thereby communicates something about the conditions that the photograph was taken under, and becomes part of the context for the image.
I would expand that idea to include all cameras. If the technical limitations of the image-capture device are apparent, and the photographer isn't simply an idiot, then the medium really does become part of the message. (Marshall Mcluhan still makes no sense.) The visible difference between the quality of prints from a 35mm Leica and a large-format view camera are inherently part of Henri Cartier-Bresson's and Ansel Adam's work, respectively. Neither could have produced their style of image with the other's equipment. The signature of their cameras is an inherent part of their photographs.
Thanks, Calley. You're very kind.
Matthew, I get what you're saying, and I think I will have to search for my own phone style, or voice as it were, and treat the results as what they are rather than try to make them more like what I make with the F717.
Did you see today's 'What The Duck?' cartoon?
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