Camera Phone Photography as Art

I don't agree that in a few years everyone will be doing cellphone photography exhibits. A few cellphone photo exhibits are interesting because they are unique, but the quality of the photos is inferior to the quality of photos that can be taken with a good digital camera that I don't think photographers will want to spend time making such images when they are no longer as new and unique as they are today. Also, the fact that cellphone cameras are convenient is not an adequate reason for why they should be used in place of better, but bulkier, cameras.

What is interesting about Patrice Elmi's photographs is that they appear as if they were taken from a good camera, not a cellphone camera. The colors are all very vibrant, the light is good, and the images are sharp. I was surprised to read that Elmi did not photoshop or digitally manipulate the images. However, to me what is most impressive about these photos is not the images themselves but that they were taken with a cellphone camera.

The prints are only 6 inches square. At a time when large photographs are becoming more and more popular, why would many photographers want to limit themselves to small prints?

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Practice Panoramas

Field Trip

Photo classes are excellent because they're pretty much the only college classes I've had that go on field trips. I really enjoyed the trip to Portland. I liked Tanja Hollander’s landscapes a lot although I wasn’t a big fan of her window shots. Her landscapes, particularly the water shots reminded me of the series of photos that are half ocean and half sky (I forget the photographer’s name). It was fun to photograph the basement of the mill and see the Photographic Collective’s darkrooms. I would like to take the color darkroom class at the Bakery Photographic Collective either next month or next semester.

The photo exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art was great because it was a large collection of diverse photos all in one place.

I didn’t like “The Wonder Gaze” as much as the Glickman collection or Tanja Hollander’s work. I liked the name of the exhibit, “The Wonder Gaze”, and the idea of photoshopping out the victims of the hangings in order to focus on the spectators. However, I didn’t find the six color photographs all that aesthetically pleasing, except for the one with the old haunted looking tree. The color photographs just didn't hold my attention for very long, and I felt like they were unnecessarily large. Also, I was very surprised by how expensive the photos were.

Looking at the photographs in Portland and Kolster’s “Safety Envelopes” series has made me more interested in looking at other people’s work… I now procrastinate by looking at photographs online.

Animation

The animation project was fun but I felt that it didn’t really focus on photography. It was difficult for me to concentrate on an individual photograph when I had to be continuously taking photographs. I wanted to move the camera around to make the animation more interesting and focus on the framing of each shot, but that was difficult to do. After looking at all 600 or so photos together in the animation, I realized that all my zooming in and out and moving around led to a very crazy and chaotic movie. However, the result was okay because the hectic movement worked well with the band practice animation. After realizing the need to keep the camera still or move it very very slowly, I tried to keep the camera fairly still for the “Kitchen Counter Chaos” animation in order for the animation to focus more on the characters’ actions than on the camera’s movements. However, I wasn’t all that successful in keeping the camera still because I got too caught up in moving the camera to follow and zoom in on the action. Although imovie was a little frustrating to use, I much preferred it to having to deal with the printers and matting. Althouth I prefer normal photography to animation, I’m glad that we had this assignment and I’d like to make more animations. There is a lot for me to learn about creating animations.

Field Trip!

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