Friday, August 19, 2011

Happy World Photography Day!


Today is World Photography Day. Amateur and professional photographers will be out-and-about with their cameras celebrating this intriguing art form and documenting the sights and actions of August 19, 2011. To peruse what photographers around the world are sharing today, visit the World Photography Day gallery.

Recently, I just added a new camera to my photography mix -- an iPhone. I'm probably one of the last people in my circles to succumb to smart phone technology, but I was philosophically adverse to receiving email on my cell phone. Knowing my obsessive compulsive tendencies, I knew that I would be checking and sending email all the time if I had access to a smarter cell phone.

Well, my concerns have proven accurate as I now obsessively use (and check) my new iPhone. But on the upside, the iPhone provided access to a decent camera phone. My past cell phones also had a camera feature, but photographs taken with my phone were rarely worthy of posting on this blog (except this one). Such accessible photo technology is expanding the number of amateur photographers exponentially and probably increasing the number of people participating in today's photography celebration.

My next challenge is figuring out how to use the iPhone camera to take really great photographs. At a wedding last weekend, I took this photograph during the reception in the crystal chandelier-lit ballroom. I had just used the iPhone camera and was placing it back in my handbag when I accidentally took this image. It's a beautiful mistake, right?

While I didn't intend to capture this image, the iPhone camera's movement caught the light, energy and happiness in the abstract. James Joyce once said, "Mistakes are the portals of discovery." I'm looking forward to what these "camera mistakes" lead me to discover about photography and advancing my technique and composition

1 comment: