Always Opportunities to Capture Images

Kind of neat time right now for my son, Elijah.  He's a ninth grader/freshman at Coral Reef Senior High School in South Dade.  It's a good school and my son is their Drama Magnet program.  He enjoys performing and the arts in general but has a strong interest in Film Making.  So recently there was a Dade County High School Video Competition to create a one minute commercial to discourage high school students from drinking and driving.  Well, Elijah's entry WON!  His video will be featured as D.Y.F.I.T. (Drug Free Youths in Town) campaign video on the subject for 2012.  It was very exciting for us!

In winning the competition, Elijah will be rewarded $500 Cash Prize and an Award Plaque at their annual banquet coming up on May 11th.  That's a lot of money for a young teenager to get all in one sum!  He's been learning to play the guitar and absolutely loving it.  In the process, he's had to borrow or use whatever guitar is available.  So he hasn't been learning on a "fine instrument".  I did not want to invest in a guitar and have him lose interest, and later find this few hundred dollars instrument collecting dust in a corner of his room.  What I did tell him was that he would value his first guitar far more if he had to pay for it with his own money. Also mentioned that a Summer job would be one way to start that process.

As you can probably guess by now, he wants to use that Cash Prize to purchase his first guitar.  I can't argue with that because he DID WORK HARD to create, edit and submit the video.  This leads me to the writing of this blog.  Elijah asked if we could go to a Guitar store so that he could handle a few guitars to help him narrow his choices down of what he could buy next week.  Being a male that his kicked a few tires in new car showrooms prior to buying a car, I understood where he was coming from.

 So off we went to the Guitar Center on Kendall Drive, a local mecca for aspiring musicians.  This was completely foreign to me.  I never had an interest in learning to play a musical instrument and knew nothing about the various types of guitars and believe me, there are quite a few.  My son, Elijah immediately engaged with a sales person and they set him up with a guitar within his said price range, hooked it up to an amp and walked away and allowed him to just play.  He was in pure bliss as he caressed the body of this beautifully finished guitar and moved his fingers along the spine creating sounds I immediately recognized from an old Rolling Stone's song. 

He looked up at me with this million dollar smile and it made me remember those delicious little smiles of his when he was 2 and 3 years of age.  It was a pretty special moment.  I could see he was truly enjoying the moment and now just enveloping himself in the making of music with this guitar.  The sale man had brought two others for him to try.  This was his time, and I didn't want to rush him in any way.  But I had little I could add to the conversation of picking a guitar other than "this one is pretty!"  So I told to take his time and sample a few, I was just going to look around.

I immediately began to notice how beautiful these instruments were!  There were wonderful lines and shapes all around me.  Armed with my trusty iPhone, I decided that it might be a nice way to pass the time and document this pretty cool first for my son.  It brought memories back of when I used to shoot every waking moment of him, especially in his first two years.  But I didn't want to pester while he was enjoying his time playing.  So I focused on the shapes that caught my eye.

I loved what I was finding and saw the art and attention to detail that went into these instruments.  It made it easier to understand why some of these were over a few thousand dollars.  At every turn, I saw a photo opportunity

That's when it dawned on me that there are photo opportunities ALL THE TIME!!  Most of us, myself included, become desensitized by our surrounding and just take them for granted.  We just walk, drive, text past beauty around all the time.  I looked around to see if anyone else was appreciating how gorgeous some of these instruments were.  Those that were playing an instrument were completely submersed in the music they were making.  While other 'co-pilots' like me were busy checking their Facebook status.  "Wow" I thought, it was disheartening to witness others not taking in what was so prominently in front of them!

 
It made me realize that I was very fortunate to have made this simple, yet overwhelmingly overlooked insight.  I was happy to be there in the moment, and finding a way to share with my son that I know he will appreciate years from now when he looks at these images and recalls the day we went shopping for his first guitar.  He'll remember the sheen from the finishes of the guitars, the wonderful curves and grain of the wood.

Plus I was able to sneak in a shot of him jamming to the one he gravitated to most!

Carry your camera, life happens at every turn and it's beautiful!

The Irony of the iPhone

The Irony of the iPhone

Recently, I picked up the new iPhone 4S.  It was really exciting to finally get 'the phone'.  After carrying an old Palm Treo phone for 8 years...it worked, I saw no reason to replace it.  I was really looking forward to all the amazing things I had heard about with regards to this phone.  Downloaded a few 'apps' and started to explore.

It wasn't long before I discovered that shooting with the built-in camera was surprisingly good, far better than I anticipated.  Here was, for me a business tool, that I used for emails, reading PDF's, keeping track of contacts and clients and of course phone calls.  Recently, I had to travel for business and normally I always make a point of carrying one of my cameras.  But on this recent trip, I chose to leave my smaller second body home and my primary camera I just sold as I plan to purchase a new body.  It was a short trip and I didn't think I'd be able to dedicate time to shoot.  But as is the case all too often, my flight was delayed.  So I tried to keep myself entertained.

I found myself looking around and seeing images that I wanted to capture.  The more I shot, the more I enjoyed the challenge of making images that I found interesting, dynamic and worth sharing.  I had heard and read of iphoneography and thought it was something Apple junkies created just to worship the brand.  But here I was getting more and more invested in creating images that I would have been happy to make with my more serious 'tools'.

The more I shot, the more I felt this was a viable new tool for me to use.  To some extent, I started to feel a sense of guilt.  Here I was shooting with a camera phone, no control over my exposure settings and a tiny sensor and miniscule lens.  While at home, sat a bag of expensive lenses, some valued at over $1000 dollars that I painstakingly researched, and purchased that took a real commitment at work to justify.  Was I cheating myself, my gear, my commitment to the art image-making?  Was I becoming a casual less serious shooter?  These images could never be enlarged to the same size as images made with my brick full frame DSLR. Was this bad?

It's been a few months now, and I have a collection of over 150 images that I truly like very much shot with my iPhone.  It has now become a challenge for me to put together a collection of images shot strictly with my iPhone that could be displayed in a gallery.  The images shared here are the images from that initial business trip that started the whole self-imposed challenge.  So the irony for me is that I find myself reaching for the iPhone to shoot instead of my optically superior lenses and camera.  Someone mentioned to me recently that if I had made those same images with one of my cameras they would be far superior and more usable.  I don't disagree but I lustfully enjoy watching people's reactions when they look at some of the images and gasp and say "you shot that with a phone?!?!"

Spring Break just passed for my wife and son and we took a trip to Puerto Rico for a few days.  On the trip, I chose to carry one of my cameras but I also had my iPhone with me, for work of course...
I hate to say it but I prefer the images that I shot with my iPhone to those shot with my camera.  So this is my new irony!  Do I continue to shoot with my iPhone or shoot with my camera?