Get Ready!  Phone Photography Is Here to Stay...

Picturing Social Justice is the theme of an exhibition of photographic images scheduled for San Diego in October.  A few months ago I would have believed 

that photographers with the biggest and best equipment almost always have the advantage over people with point-and-shoot cameras... and certainly an advantage over people who take pictures with mobile phones.  Now the way I see the issue is a bit different.  First, a photographic image doesn’t have to be an unaltered photograph.  It can be an image that starts out being just a photograph and with editing software it may become a stronger statement than the raw unaltered picture. A photograph image doesn’t have to be explicitly about anything... It just IS.

If you’ve been reading this BLOG, you know I’m leaving the big cameras at home this week... even the little point-and-shoot is left snug and unused in the bag.  Today a couple of ordinary calla lilies were, well, just ordinary until I found the negatives were extraordinary... even spectacular.  I was parked for a couple of minutes near the intersection of Park Boulevard and University Avenue when I saw an old bearded man “drive” up to the pedestrian crossing in his motorized wheel chair to wait for the green light to cross. A man on a bicycle was already waiting for the light.  I wondered if my cell phone could make an interesting picture, one that says something... something about being out in the world on wheels.  I snapped one picture, took it home, and found in editing that making most of the image black and white with only the riders and the red traffic light in color was more interesting than either all color or all black and white.  I took the time to take a picture of a piece of myself in my car’s side mirror. 

On the way to a meeting with the committee working on VISUALIZING SOCIAL JUSTICE, I parked the car and headed for a short set of steps with yellow stripes to keep senior citizens like me from slipping. I shot with the phone and turned the steps sideways.  Oh, yeah.  I forgot to mention the red strips in the parking lot. They were there, I guess, to alert drivers to stop above the steps.

Life is a visual feast... Come to Supper!