War Museum ~ Ottawa, Canada (embiggenable) • µ4/3
iPhone book / covers and spine ~ (embiggenable)
iPhone book ~ (embiggenable)
Came across a great picture making quote from a very unlikely source, Hunter S. Thompson.
In a letter, Thompson was proposing an article to POP PHOTO magazine. The tentative title for the article was "The Case for the Chronic Snapshooter"". The motivation for the article arose from Thompson's reading of a POP PHOTO article, "Good & Bad Pictures" in which the author wrote that snapshooting is not, by definition, a low and ignorant art.
After reading the article, Thompson ...
...got out some of my prints and decided that not all of them were worthless. As a matter of fact there were some that gave me pleasure. And I had sold a good many, I’d enjoyed taking them, and some had even given other people pleasure....
...and here is where the good quote emerges...
When photography gets too technical as to intimidate people, the element of simple enjoyment is bound to suffer. Any man who can see what he wants to get on film will usually find some way to get it; and a man who thinks his equipment is going to see for him is not going to get much of anything .... The moral here is that anyone who wants to take pictures can afford adequate equipment and can, with very little effort, learn how to use it.
I find this quote/excerpt to be spot on, re: why people like to take pictures with a camera phone. That would include me inasmuch as I am enjoying a newfound freedom of, as KODAK once marketed its cameras, pushing the button (OK, OK. touching the digitally simulated button) and letting the A.I. (computational photography) do the rest. And, in doing the rest, the software driven device does a damn fine job of it for which no apologies are needed.
To be honest, the "perfectionist" in me can drive me do a little bit of adjustment work on a picture. However, even that "work" is most often performed on my iPhone, OR, if I want to do the work on a "big" screen, I can do it on my iPad.
And that blows my mind. If my desktop machine blows up tomorrow-I sincerely hope it doesn't-and my "real" camera gear falls out my canoe and sinks to the bottom the Bog River Flow, I would be happy for the rest of my picture making life with an iPhone and an iPad. In fact, I would be VERY happy because that tandem is-to use a phrase that is most often used disparaging-better than "good enough". Much much better than good enough.
FYI, the spreads from the iPhone book are different from one another inasmuch as the larger (10x10") book is a hardcover version from Shutterfly. The smaller (8x8") book is a soft cover version (printed on matte paper) from Parabo.
FYI # 2, the War Museum picture will most likely be my submission to Mike Johnston's Baker's Dozen call for In The Museum pictures.