I have a love/hate relationship with the camera on my phone. I know I'm not alone... I've read other blog posts and stories written by real photographers (which I certainly do not pretend to be) about the same thing. The camera on my phone makes it so easy to capture every day pictures that I find myself grabbing for my "real" camera less and less. I love the fast ability to grab a memory of something that's happening RIGHT NOW. But I hate the quality of some of these pictures. And I really hate that this is yet another way that the phone has made me lazy. Love it. Hate it. Wouldn't want to live without it. But I need to find a better balance. (Hmmm... bet I could say that about lots of things these days. Bet you could too!)
Here are a few examples from just this week.
The picture of Zane happened in our living room - after dark. He was being particularly adorable (which, come to think of it, has been happening more and more often... maybe we are past the worst of the terrible twos/threes...) I was trying to get him to stop moving long enough to get a picture. My phone decided to apply one of the most offensive flashes known to man. The result was a shot of a super sweet boy with a super sweet smile, but devil red eyes and a totally blownout face. As in crazy bright. So I pulled the thing into photoshop and tried to salvage it. This black and white was the best I could do. A nice shot, but definitely not one I'll be blowing up and hanging on my wall.
The next one of Beckett happened on the same evening. Again, he was in a super mood and got bonus points because he was also super cuddly. He was in my lap and we were playing and I decided to flip the camera around so that he could watch it take a picture of him. This shot was the result, which I love. Unfortunately, the quality is utter crap. It's grainy and (I think since it was taken with the flipped camera) pretty tiny from a pixel perspective. I tried a few things to make this picture a little better, but when you start with poor quality it's pretty hard to see major improvements. So I left this one alone and have decided to embrace the grain! It's hip to be grainy, right? Isn't that how Instagram has become so popular???
The final picture is a pretty good example of why I won't be turning off the camera on my phone any time soon. We went out to dinner recently and some hilarity ensued. We don't eat out frequently and when we do go, we usually have my parents with us. Last night I didn't feel like eating what we had planned and felt like cooking it even less. So we ended up at Red Robin. Eating out (even at a relatively casual place like RR) with the boys can be an adventure. Spencer eats A LOT. Quinn eats next to nothing. Zane can't sit still. Beckett is very very loud - and has taken to eating everything off a fork, which makes him very very messy! Toward the end of our meal Zane decided to gather all of the little red baskets and proceeded to do all kinds of things with them. At one point, which was kind of inevitable, they turned into hats. I was able to grab this picture of half of my crazy little family. It is pretty awesome because it reminds me how much fun we had - and is also a pretty good reminder not to take ourselves too seriously!
This week, I vow to charge up the battery in my "real" camera. I vow to take some real pictures with good quality and more than 4 seconds of prep time! (I will also continue to point and click with the iphone because you never know when a perfect photo op will come along!!)
Have a great week everyone!
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