Camera Lounge

I often use my camera phone when out and about as there are plenty of occasions that I don’t have my DSLR, but feel the need to take pictures of things! Examples of this are:

Nights out on the town where a DSLR is just not a good look or a wise accessory around alcohol!

• When I am away on business and don’t have room to pack the DSLR.

• In my car and a DSLR is just not practical!

I have even featured some of these results on my photoblog. Here are a couple of tips for you to get the best out of your camera phone images.

Black And White

Some of my best results have actually been indoor night shots using the black and white effect setting. I find this gives quite a nice grainy effect that reminds me of HP5 black and white film!

Using the contrast slider or curves adjustment in Photoshop you can boost the contrast and really give the image some impact. You can even do this using the tuning settings in Picasa for even faster results.

Collages

Recently I have started using the ‘picture pile’ feature in Picasa to make a collage of camera phone images. I have found this quite successful for images that are no good on their own due to quality, but look good all chucked together to make a story.

This is really simple to do if you have Picasa, you simply select the images you want, use the hold feature if they are in different folders, and select ‘picture pile’. I find that 5 or 6 images work quite well for this. You can keep on clicking on the collage until you are happy with the layout (can take some time!).

Picasa

If you don’t already have Picasa then I suggest you download it now – it is free, and a really useful little application for importing, organizing and viewing your images. In the spirit of camera phone images, it is quick and easy to use without the need to go into Photoshop and spend hours editing! You can even preview RAW files from your DSLR!

Whilst I always prefer the quality of my DLSR images, there is always a place for my camera phone images on my photoblog, as they fulfill the ‘diary’/’snapshot’ side to my photography, where things don’t have to be perfectly composed or artistic. They are just what they are! In a way, the camera phone is the new Polaroid, or Holga, or Diana. I love it.