It’s show time! A rare outing for a family shot on this blog. This is from Kidzone in Berkhamsted where every other parent is armed with a camera of some sort capturing their offspring bouncing off the padded walls. No doubt should anyone be bold enough to produce a proper DSLR they’d be hauled up before the paedo police but it’s quite refreshing that no-one minds the occasional spray of flashlights and shutters as long as their moppets are having fun.

Anyway, this one is from my rather fun cameraphone that turns into a blurred mess once the sun goes in and which is a bit hopeless for capturing the picture you thought you’d got (give it ten years and Lomography will be selling it for $150) but, as I’ve said elsewhere, if you’re prepared to work with it, it’s great fun. I’ve now worked out that I need to guess about a second ahead and also be prepared for slight to massive blur on pretty much anything moving. A dozen or so discarded test shots and I finished up with this one showing the boys having a bit of fun together – to my eye it actually looks better than if it had been perfectly frozen.

I have no idea who owns the legs in the background. See the blurriness writ large here.

I’m participating in the Best Of 2009 Blog Challenge.  Every day this month, I write something different about what’s happened this year.

For me, by far and away the most useful article this year has been this photographers’ rights guide.  I keep a printed copy in my camera bag, just in case I’m stopped when I’m out and about with my camera.

Photographer’s rights are a massive issue for me.  I take a lot of photos in public places, and a lot of photos that are likely to have other people’s children in them.  In the last week I’ve read about photographers being stopped for taking photos of Christmas lights or sunsets at St Paul’s Cathedral, supposedly for “terrorism prevention”.

Photographers may legally be stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism act.  It’s a catch-all clause that lets the police search anyone they like, regardless of whether they have reasonable grounds to suspect that that person is involved in terrorism.  Security guards often have the same attitude: the leader of Hull City Council, Liberal Democrat Carl Minns, was stopped whilst taking photos of a shopping centre: he had every legal right to do so.  Question: with so many high-resolution cameraphones on the market these days, and when the police seem to be so quick to react to photographers, would a potential terrorist likely carry a light, easily-hidden cameraphone, or a big, noticeable DSLR?  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t yet heard of anybody being stopped and searched simply for using a cameraphone.  And aren’t detailed photos and area photos of any area, especially those popular with tourists, available on Google Maps and Google Street View?  Why go out and risk being discovered when you could, quite simply, open your web browser?

The other stick used to beat photographers with, of course, is suspicion of paedophilia.  I am a young woman, with a child of my own.    I have had my non-existant criminal record checked by no fewer than four organisations for volunteering and for work, and am about to pay to be CRB-checked AGAIN through my own company.  When David and I go somewhere, I usually want to take some pictures of what we’re doing.  Our local council prohibits photography on leisure centre property, so I can’t take pictures of David swimming.  Of the three soft play centres we’ve attended, I’ve been asked not to take pictures in one (we didn’t go back), and told that I should only be taking pictures of my own child in the second and the third.  (All credit to the third play centre, the only one we visit now.  The staff are fantastic, I can take as many pictures of David and whoever he’s playing with as I want, and I have never been asked to stop taking pictures by a member of staff there.)  The labelling of all people who take photos of children as potential paedophiles is as ludicrous as the suggestion that everyone who takes “too many” photos in a public place is a terrorist.  And again, I have never seen anyone stopped for using a cameraphone in either a soft play centre or a leisure centre: equally, the Plymouth nursery paedophile Vanessa George took her disgusting and vile pictures on a cameraphone, not an SLR.

This paranoia affects me professionally, too.  Most of my work involves taking childrens’ portraits.  I’m about to pay a not insignificant amount of money to show potential clients that I’m not a padeophile; I have to have express signed permission from the parents of any children I photograph to both take and use the images, until they reach the age of eighteen.

Part of the reason for the disproportionate reaction is down to Daily Mail-type public hysteria.  If you believe that every person with a camera in the park is a padeophile, or every Asian a terrorist (thank you, tabloids!) then you’re not going to want them to take photos of your children or your home or the city where you work, in case something happens to you or your family.  But here’s the truth: there has been one, just ONE, terrorist attack in the UK in the last ten years, before the mass public hysteria.  The kind of anti-terrorism crackdowns we see today just didn’t happen during the IRA bombing campaign, and the 7th July bombings weren’t carried out with tripods and cameras.  Children are still most likely to be molested by someone they know, not some random strange woman whose camera just happened to be expensive and specialised.

It’s getting harder and harder to be a photographer in this changing world, with this changing climate of public opinion.  Articles like the photographer’s guide to rights are extremely helpful in clarifying the situation and helping us to retain some of our dearly-held liberties.  I don’t believe that we live in an Orwellian society, but I do value the freedom to take pictures of whatever I want, and to share those pictures, without being suspected of evil and awful crimes.

If this is all too depressing for you, head over to the Daily Photo, where there’s a lovely picture of a ginger kitten to cheer you up.

did I dream that walk in the park…, originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite of two cameraphone photos taken in my local park late afternoon.

Autumn Medley 2(composite), originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite of three cameraphone photos edited with the GIMP. I am here exploring the textural resonances between the stone wall and the drying out dead summer blossoms.

Seasonal Medley 3, originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite ‘medley’ of cameraphone photos.

Seasonal Medley 2, originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite ‘medley’ of cameraphone photos.

where reverie meets reality, originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite of 5 cameraphone pics.

where reverie meets reality 2, originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite image made from 6 cameraphone pics.

Park Lite.., originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

View of my local park taken with my 2mgp cameraphone.

I really should be sorting out today’s pics from Chesham v Romulus. I should be but two things are stopping me. Firstly, it was a monumentally terrible game of soccer and I know that despite it being the first outing for my shiny new D90 that it won’t be redeemed by any decent shots. Secondly, I have yet another new camera to play with and this one is the most fun since … well, since the last one.

To recap, in the past two months I’ve gone from a lone D40X to having a DSLR plus a Canonet rangefinder that takes awesome stuff when loaded with TriX and Neopan as well as dusting off my old Nikon F65 to have some fun with colour film. And because I can’t remember the last time I upgraded my phone I’ve now got the latest freebie offering from my mobile company and as well as having internet on it so I can facebook all day long it also has a 3.2MP camera that, shock of shocks, isn’t terrible.

In fact not only is it not terrible but it pretty much answers that tedious question: what would Henri Cartier-Bresson use now? I tell you he wouldn’t be lunking a 1Ds Mark IV, he’d be loving the lightweight discretion a cameraphone brings. If I’d known I was going to enjoy this so much I’d have chosen a phone with a better camera but this is fine for now. Or until I next upgrade some time after the Rio olympics. In fact 3.2MP should be more than okay – it’s only tedious pixel-peepers and inveterate sharpeners who’ll moan. But they’re dullards who can be ignored anyway.

See the growing set here – and this image nice n big here. And remember the iPhone guy (Joel Grey) I talked about before here.

Kota Kinabalu city

Originally uploaded by 1davidstella

mood swings

Originally uploaded by 1davidstella

O Samsung W880 é um verdadeiro cameraphone, conta com uma incrível camera de 12mpx. Isso que a alguns anos atrás parecia impossível colocar em um celular!

Ele possui flash Xenon, tecla dedica para a camera, com rotação, igual das cameras convencionais. O botão de modo permite a alternância rápida entre Macro, Paisagem, Retrato, Programa, Manual, o modo de disparo de propriedade SmartAuto e, finalmente, a gravação do vídeo. Possui uma tela de 3,3 polegadas, AMOLED.

W880

• Boa iluminação: como os sensores das câmeras de celulares ainda não é dos melhores, fotografar seu tem com boa iluminação é algo que ajuda muito a ter melhores fotos.
• Flash é bom ou ruim?: Tirar fotos com o flash ligado pode deixar a luz da imagem meio dura, artificial e feia. O melhor a fazer é evitá-lo mas, quando lembramos da dica acima, percebemos que, pelo menos em fotos noturnas, o flash é indispensável. E nada de usar o zoom digital, que não funciona de verdade e tira a qualidade da imagem.
• Fotografe perto: Câmeras de celular ainda não possuem um zoom decente, então procure fotografar seu tema o mais próximo possível dele. Além de melhorar a imagem, fica mais fácil de mostrar na tela para os outros. Ocupe toda a tela com o tema, e prefira fundos simples.
• Não perca chances: Ás vezes, uma foto tem que ser tirada imediatamente. Quando isso acontecer, lembre-se apenas de ficar o mais imóvel possível, e de se lembrar que o disparo da foto pode ser mais demorado que o de uma câmera digital comum.
• Explore os ajustes, mas sem efeitos: Apesar de simples, a câmera do seu celular possui alguns ajustes interessantes, como equilíbrio de branco e ajuste de cores. Explore e brinque com esses ajustes. Evite, porém, aqueles efeitos estranhos como molduras, imagem invertida, etc.
• Cuidado com o que fotografa: Não use a câmera do celular aonde não é permitido, como museus e shows. Peça permissão para tirar foto dos outros, não tente esconder a foto. Entretanto, desligue o barulho artificial do disparo da câmera, pois você pode incomodar os outros.
• Inove: Tente ângulos diferentes, tire fotos inusitadas, de temas exóticos. As fotos são gratuitas, então inove e tire foto de tudo o que sua imaginação mandar.
• Cuidados: Tome alguns cuidados com a câmera do seu celular. Mantenha a lente sempre limpa e evite deixar o celular cair no chão ou ficar no sol. Sempre que possível, arquive suas fotos em um computador ou em um CD, para que você não corra o risco de perdê-las.

With my Nokia 6300.

On the day when I was out for have a brief meeting with client these were a few spot-on shots I could not resist to take even when I did not have a camera with me at the time. My camera phone (or is it phone camera?) is a good backup but minus the low megapixel and bad image quality, though.

A slumbering money changer in KL Sentral.

Even when there was a customer around?

On the train on my way back to PJ I took this shot of a man holding a packed lunch.

The power tower (or whatever you call it) shot when I touched down PJ. Got out of the usual route a bit just to get a bit closer to this gigantic thing. Funny how I had this visual in my mind at that time that the electricity from this thing was going to come right down and give me a good shock! Something like in those sci-fi movies.

The lady who has always been in this place collecting recyclable materials like aluminium cans, papers, plastic bottles and stuff. I even has a particular spot at the basement of this building where she works on the materials she collects from the big dumpster. I have so much respect for her diligence. Each time I walk through this place to and from the LRT station I see her there.

If not for people like her much more recyclable materials would have been wasted unnecessarily.

The above photos were digitally processed in order to be more presentable.

suspension bridge

Originally uploaded by 1davidstella

village house

Originally uploaded by 1davidstella

work in progress

Originally uploaded by 1davidstella

Old Colwyn Bay reflection.., originally uploaded by lenfirewood.

Composite of 2 cameraphone photos edited in the GIMP and colour tweaked in picnik.