How I Use the Camera Phone

(A WORD TO THE WISE: Technical quality is the very last and least important consideration I had when taking these photos. It made no impression on me. Any criticism, constructive or not, based on technical opinions, knowledge or insights about technique will go in one ear and out the other. If technique and technical perfection was what I wanted, I sure as hell wouldn't have used an old run-down 1.3 mega pixel camera phone. LOL)

Photos posted from March 16, 2009 were shot in San Francisco between January and March 2009 using a low-tech 1.3 mega pixel camera phone. I used a sepia setting for no particular reason.

None of the photos were digitally manipulated, except to enhance sharpness for a deeper, darker contrast. In addition, I had to resize the photos to comply with JPG's sizing requirements. I didn't double expose any images and I didn't use any trick photography. The lighting phenomena, whatever that may be, were natural consequences of the limitations of the camera; unintentional, uncontrollable and unexpected.

My phone has no direct download capability to transfer images from camera-to-computer. So I had to email each image to my computer, and then open the email and save the photo to a file folder, and then open that before I could resize and post. Resolution was compromised during this transference, but I consider that to be a good thing.

NOTE ABOUT UPSIDE DOWN PHOTOS: Photos that appear to be "upside down" were actually taken with the camera phone held upside down and facing away from me and behind me. They weren't taken straight up like normal and then flipped over to make them look upside down.

However, several upside-down photos were deliberately flipped over afterwards so they would appear straight up and down after I made the editorial decision that the desired impact, or the aesthetic presence, or the nuance of the photo ....whatever!.....would have been lost if it was left upside down. I never took a right-side up photo and flipped it over to make it look upside down; the rule of thumb is, if the photo looks upside down, it was taken upside down!