Sunday, May 3, 2009

Take me to the shoot!

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Nowadays, anywhere I go, I carry some sort of 'camera' with me. In earlier days, I wouldn't consider doing any serious picture shooting at all unless I had some heavy gear with me (meaning, single lens reflex sort of thing). Those were the days when developing negatives and making paper prints were long and expensive processes. But then, as the 'digital revolution' became reality and digital camera shooting evolved to equivalent end-product quality, I started carrying trivial cameras of appalling quality just good enough to record the content somehow, deploying in front of me eyes. Even an embedded camera on a mobile computer, at the absence of anything else that is, was good enough to record the scene of my choice. Curiously, some of them pictures nonetheless, by far not sufficiently pixeled to print killer posters with, I liked quite a bit... and without consciously realizing it, I 'started' somehow assembling 'polaroid quality' shots (meaning the 'worst' possible, apologies to Polaroid artists) and let them be. Not every shot one takes needs to be razor sharp with the best possible colors. A mobile phone picture can be as good as anything. As long as I like what I see, it's good enough, right?

Anyways, despite my posting of everything I shoot on Flickr nowadays, I'll be the last seeking comments on these shots of either appreciation or contempt by any strangers, friends or enemies. I am using Flickr more as a storage medium (thx much Yahoo!) for universal access and back-up reasons, and never been interested whether anyone decided to use any of these shots for any reason he/she may choose. I am not that good nor famous to risk wasting 'lost' copyrights of golden egg shots anyways. I actually shoot pictures for my own pleasure and nobody else's, come to think of it. Ever since I stopped smoking I ain't got many other small pleasures left. Not? Outside blogging, that is. But again, that one is just done as a reminder to my siblings and theirs of what I used to think and do when still around.

I'm also one of those who likes to photoshoot as much as a heart desires and a memory card allows. Hundreds of pictures in a hiking shoot of a couple of hours is not unusual. In the tour of Flanders last month I had about 500 pictures taken in a matter of a few minutes when the tour paraded in front of my eyes and those of my two slave photographers...

We were at the shopping village of Maasmechelen yesterday and all I had with me was an iPhone. We didn't get there to shoot pictures anyways... iPhone produces descent shots and pixels but, as anybody on the geek planet knows, its glass really suckzz!! Nevertheless, the challenge has always been to be able to nevertheless produce a shot that most viewers won't discount as seer garbage... that is what really drives me when shooting with the likes of my Nokia N95 or an iPhone. The old coalmines in Belgian Limburg, yesterday, revealed by the tarnished leftovers of abandoned steel and brick elevator structures is an interesting subject to record, even if my best gear available at the moment happened to be a... mediocre iPhone. There's plenty of software around, thank God, to turn a dull shot in a dramatic and high quality print, if you wish to do so. Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom, Pixelmator, to name a few... But I'm still good with the original iPhone quality of that shot too! No magic software tricks and make-ups necessary here...

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