A New Exercise/challenge

bdcolen

Okay, folks. Enough with this Lens Baby stuff! Enough with the long lenses! Enough with the superwides! Enough with the full-frame-super-zoom-digi-killers... Let's get down to BASICS.

What is today's equivalent of the Box Brownie, the old plastic point and shoot? The cell phone camera! So here's what you do...put away all the expensive equipment, and for the next week, shoot with nothing but your cell phone - and you may not use the zoom on it. :rofl :rofl

This will force you to think carefully about what you're shooting; it will force you to frame carefully; it will force you to get close to your subject - because you won't have any other alternative. :rofl :rofl On the other hand, this way you will always have your camera with you.

Do I have any takers?:ivar :ivar :ivar If I do, we'll put up a place to post one week from today...

lizzard_nyc

My crackberry and I are in.

thoth

My crappy camera phone and I are game...

tortillatorture

yey for exercises!
i think i just watch this one though...
i have a camera on mine, but i dont have the cables.
should be fun to see what everyone come up with!

lizzard_nyc

MakeMeShutter wrote:

I am in the same boat, phone with camera but no cables.
I will watch as well.

Tortilla Torture and Shawn,
I don't have cables either, but I can email myself the photos and then upload them to smugmug. Just a thought.

HoofClix

Okey Dokey! (Taken with my Blackberry Strom)
I took my daughter, 15.5yo, and her friends to a show at Amos' Southend in Charlotte NC.. Screaming 16 year olds...: I'd never heard it before, that's because I've heard it every day out of my daughter's room...

"The Acadamy Is" That's Beckett pretending to sing, today's Davey Jones I suppose:


Mayday Parade from the upper deck and up close:


I played in a band for a number of years when I still lived in New Orleans, and I also remember going to the Warehouse to see a lot of really good acts, but was it really like this? Seems a lot more easygoing to lay a blanket on the concrete and dring that Chianti back then... This is so loud the band doesn't even know they aren't in tune...

sara505

Way to level the playing field, BD!

I have to figure out how the camera on my phone works - and then how do you get them onto the computer - someone said send them to your e-mail address?

bdcolen

MakeMeShutter wrote:

I am in the same boat, phone with camera but no cables.
I will watch as well.

Cables? Cables?! You don't need no steenkin' cables!! Get with the program, people! You shoot the photo, then you Email it to...yourself!! Open it, and save it on your desktop. Then work it in PS if you want. Convert it to BW if you want.

Cables??

bdcolen

bdcolen wrote:

Cables? Cables?! You don't need no steenkin' cables!! Get with the program, people! You shoot the photo, then you Email it to...yourself!! Open it, and save it on your desktop. Then work it in PS if you want. Convert it to BW if you want.

Cables??

Oh - and skip the concert photos from the rear of the hall!

Seriously. Your cell phone camera is your street camera; your home camera; your portrait camera. Remember what Capa said -

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

lizzard_nyc

MakeMeShutter wrote:

I went in search of greater powers to help me with my cell phone dilemma.
The 16 year old was more than happy to point out that my phone was able to send to the web. Not only did I learn how to send a picture, but I learned to send a text message.

Yes I am technologically challenged.

Below are the results of my effort, I realize the image does not relate to this challenge but you are all able to witness my first cell phone image transmission.

You are cracking me up .

Welcome to the 21st Century:D .

Tina Manley

lizzard_nyc wrote:

You are cracking me up .

Welcome to the 21st Century:D .

I'm not there yet! I'll have to sit this one out. No cell phone with camera or e-mail.

The OLD fogie -

Tina
www.tinamanley.com

JimW

No cell phone yet, waiting to see if it catches on. Might be a fad.

The older fogie.

baldmountain

I worked at a company called Mobicious which ran a website called SnapMyLife which is a mobile photo sharing site. I wrote the BlackBerry and iPhone versions of Snap2Twitter which made it WAY easy to upload images to the SnapMyLife website. I took a LOT of mobile phone pictures. This was one of my favorites:



I'm pretty sure Snap2Twitter is still available which will give folks a way to get phone images off their phone and hosted on the internet.

Flyinggina

Tina Manley wrote:

I'm not there yet! I'll have to sit this one out. No cell phone with camera or e-mail.

The OLD fogie -

Tina
www.tinamanley.com

+ 1 cry:cry

rutt

Old fogies,

I thought about this a little. I hope B.D. will approve this, but I bet he will. Use a disposable drugstore camera.

But if your cell phone is really old enough that it doesn't have a camera and can't send an image via text message, then you probably qualify for a cheap or even free upgrade. It might cost as little as a disposable camera and film processing to upgrade your phone to one with a camera. Most phone with cameras can at least text a message somewhere where you can grab it.

pathfinder

bdcolen wrote:

Oh - and skip the concert photos from the rear of the hall!

Seriously. Your cell phone camera is your street camera; your home camera; your portrait camera. Remember what Capa said -

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

And remember, Capa was a real wartime combat photographer! Getting closer had real risks!

In this vein, Chase Jarvis' new book "The Best Camera is the One That's with You" is a compilation of his images shot entirely with an iPhone. Not all are street, many are of colors, signs ( a favorite of mine ), patterns, shapes, etc.

One of Jarvis' quotes that I think is apt is "People usually ignore the camera that's built into your phone because they consider it useless. That comes in handy."

baldmountain

When you work with a camera phone for a while you start to realize what will work and what won't. At some point you just know what the camera will catch. Until then you try stuff that you wouldn't bother with using your DSLR and sometimes are pleasantly surprised...











This is a neat effect. Guess why.

tortillatorture

email yourself with your cellphone?...what the... ok then i'l give it a try.

rutt

I tried to shoot some with my iPhone yesterday, and boy is it ever frustrating. It's that shutter lag that just kills for candid shots. Your Brownie and drugstore disposable don't have that issue.

Strategies for dealing with shutter lag?

Oh, and it better be pretty bright and even light.

bdcolen

MakeMeShutter wrote:

I went in search of greater powers to help me with my cell phone dilemma.
The 16 year old was more than happy to point out that my phone was able to send to the web. Not only did I learn how to send a picture, but I learned to send a text message.

Yes I am technologically challenged.

Below are the results of my effort, I realize the image does not relate to this challenge but you are all able to witness my first cell phone image transmission.

Way to go!

bdcolen

rutt wrote:

I tried to shoot some with my iPhone yesterday, and boy is it ever frustrating. It's that shutter lag that just kills for candid shots. Your Brownie and drugstore disposable don't have that issue.

Strategies for dealing with shutter lag?

Oh, and it better be pretty bright and even light.

Strategies for dealing with shutter lag:

1. Try bird hunting - that is, try leading the subject and firing where you think they're likely to be;
2. Recognize that you may not get precisely what you thought you'd get;
3.

And to answer the question Rutt asked about disposables:

Yes, you may use a disposable film camera if you don't have a cell phone camera. But I would also urge you to consider up grading to a cell phone with a camera, because if you don't have one, I'd be willing to be you are waaaaaay overdue for an upgrade.

sara505

baldmountain wrote:

I worked at a company called Mobicious which ran a website called SnapMyLife which is a mobile photo sharing site. I wrote the BlackBerry and iPhone versions of Snap2Twitter which made it WAY easy to upload images to the SnapMyLife website. I took a LOT of mobile phone pictures. This was one of my favorites:



I'm pretty sure Snap2Twitter is still available which will give folks a way to get phone images off their phone and hosted on the internet.

Good eye, great image!

sara505

Interesting exercise. Liberating, in a way, and definitely forces one to see differently. Back to the basics.
Here's one from today: Jerusalem Pita and Grill, Brookline.

rutt

Nice starting point. You actually caught an expression and an interaction!

craig_d

rutt wrote:

I tried to shoot some with my iPhone yesterday, and boy is it ever frustrating. It's that shutter lag that just kills for candid shots.

After reading Chase Jarvis' new book The Best Camera Is the One That's With You (shot entirely on his iPhone), I tried using my BlackBerry for a day and discovered exactly the problem you've noted -- the delay between pressing the button and the silly phone taking the shot is ridiculously long. The BlackBerry also can't take shots more often than about one every seven seconds, so forget about burst mode!

The solution is: You have to learn to anticipate the great shot that is about to become possible. Experience helps. I think this is why B.D. wants you to use only your phone for an entire week. After the first day or two, you'll get better.

sara505

rutt wrote:

Nice starting point. You actually caught an expression and an interaction!

I mostly liked the light. But yeah - you're right.

We're still playing by street and PJ rules? or is it an image of anything?

This is kind of fun.
I used to have a tiny Elph that was always in my pocket - even the G9, which is often in my purse (a small backpack), is not as handy as that Elph was. I remember thinking, with the Elph, I was closing the gap between my brain and my camera. The cell phone, on my waist-band, is even more accessible than the Elph was.

Wil Davis

Well, I guess that excludes me, as I use my cell-phone† for making phone calls…

…yup, I know a somewhat novel idea, but someone's gotta say it!

- Wil

† no camera in phone (…rare model)

HoofClix

Nice shot, Sara.. Looks nicely finished as well.. Goes to show that you can get something decent to start with out of a mobile..

bdcolen

Update On Rules And Regulations:
1. Please don't post images until next Monday - This is one where I don't want people influencing each other - yet.
2. Street, documentary, PJ look. That means you can shoot at your breakfast table. You can shoot in the street. You can shoot anything that catches your eye to produce an image with "the look."
3. Stop asking questions and trying to intellectualize this to death. The whole idea of this exercise is to strip down to basics and see what you can do. If I may paraphrase the famous James Carville line from the 1992 Presidential campaign - "It's the image, stupid!"

BradfordBenn

Great exercise, I took Chloe, our Newfoundland, to the park. I had the Crackberry with me, and snapped the photo I am planning on uploading next week. What was interesting is that it was quite liberating as all I could do was frame it, no focus choices, no aperture versus shutter priority, just click and take. It turned out really nice. :ivar

sara505

bdcolen wrote:

3. Stop asking questions and trying to intellectualize this to death.

Jeez, isn't this a discussion board?rofl