I forgot how when you have a baby, your usual little girl-bag containing nothing but a phone, wallet and lip balm gets replaced with a suitcase-sized container for nappies, wipes, changes of outfits and a world of other baby paraphernalia. This inevitably puts paid to any day to day lugging around of your nice posh camera. I still take a ton of personal photos, but for the moment at least, they’re all using the camera on my mobile phone. Not taking ‘nice’ photos have been niggling me a bit though, and as much as I kept trying to reassure myself that phone snaps are better than no photos, I wasn’t really convincing myself.
As a person who is pretty much always in a rush, I have a bad habit of just putting stuff on the desktop of my computer rather than properly navigating to the correct folder before saving. This always ends in tears (not literally) as I get to ‘tear my hair out’ stage with my crammed desktop, and spend hours trying to file everything in its rightful place. So a few days ago I was having my six monthly desktop sort out and got lost in looking at my photos from the past few months. I realised that regardless of the camera I used, I’ve captured real-life moments – photos that jogged memories, made me smile and go ‘awww’, and that’s what really matters.
A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon with family looking through old photos. Those little blurry dog-eared prints are more precious than most other possessions. Photos that may have felt like a mundane, day to day snap at the time, are now reminders of how things once were. Seeing everyone thirty years younger, how our home looked then, what furniture we had and how it was decorated… who cares that the photo was taken on an early Instamatic camera which didn’t focus properly?
And there it is – the realisation that really, it doesn’t matter if your photo is taken on a mobile phone camera or a big expensive DSLR. The main thing is that you take the photo. Looking through the photo library on my phone there were so many quick snaps I’d never have bothered to grab if I’d had to faff around with a big camera.
So… embrace your camera on your mobile phone. Use it, snap away. Capture those memories. Better to have mobile phone pics than none. And if you are so inclined, you can even download apps to edit your snaps and give them a little magic touch. Perhaps I’ll post some ‘phone-ography’ tips and app recommendations?
