Taking pictures got easier and easier as time went by. Today, almost any electronic device you buy comes with a camera and it becomes unlikely that you ever find yourself missing one.
Of course in front of a great opportunity you may sometimes feel that you do not have the proper tools.
If you just have your cell phone, you may wish you had your DSLR or any better camera. Still, you have something with you and can take that shot.
Is there really any proper tool anyway?
Some great photographers in the past used cameras that were much worse than what your bad cell phone camera can provide you with. Did they take bad pictures? On the contrary, their pictures survived until today.
If you have a smartphone, as many do today, you have probably noticed many photography application popped up every day. Some are good, other useless. The trend seems to be the possibility to add a vintage look to your pictures. For some it will do the trick. If you are serious about photography you may feel limited though. Yet creativity is all about how you can do something different within a frame of rules and limits. Why not limit yourself sometimes to see what you can do?
Instead of focusing on the limiting aspects, consider the advantages:
• Always available
• Easy to share
• No backache at the end of the day
• Enable you to practice
If you want to do the same things you do with better, heavier, more expensive gears, you will be disappointed.
If however you find a new way to play within the limits of the device, then you go out of your comfort zone and get creative.
If you own whatever device with an apple on it, you may want to give a look to applications such as Instagram.
In case you would use another kind of cell phone there are most likely equivalents. And if it's not a cell phone but a gaming device, a social camera or whatever, what does matter is that it has a camera, does not it?
Considering Instagram, it is indeed limiting, only has pre-sets for processing and only enables you to take square pictures.
If you want to see further, consider how much stronger the impact of symmetry is when using the square format. Learn the rule of thirds and break it. The Square format is quite demanding about composition, but if you want to learn, this is only for the better.
Recently I have been using an iPod touch to take a few pictures. At first I felt it was very bad, the camera has a definition of 0.7Mpx and terrible dynamic range. Yet I always have it with me and it made it really easy to take pictures everywhere.
I may not shoot a fashion shot with it (though some people have had fashion shots or music clips with an iPhone).
But I can get around the bad definition with panoramas, or focus on patterns, contrasts, and subjects that do not require what I cannot get. In the end it is all about expressing things, only the means are different.
Thibaut Fantian is a landscape & portrait photographer currently based in Kyoto, Japan. His work and services are available online at http://www.frameaway.com/.
Frame Away aims at providing pure photographs for your vision.
Email contact@frameaway.com today for further details.
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