An Old World in Modern Times - Thanks to My Phone Cam

I’ve been taking photos since I was a kid, using all the classic cameras as they’ve improved over the years, but today I lament their passing despite the wonderful job they used to do.

This photo, as you can see right away, was taken with a very old camera, faded, a little unsharp, although the effect is charming. Ooops, sorry, didn’t mean to deceive you: the picture was actually taken in the port area of Montreal yesterday (February 20, 2012) using a phone-cam and an app that gives the shot an old-world look.

For the past couple of years I’ve been putting phone cameras to the test and while they were lamentable in their early stages I am now convinced that for most subjects the top-end models will get you by – and then some!

Admittedly, they still have their shortcomings, literally. You can’t get an effective zoom out of them without losing quality (although I’ll have something to say about that in a moment) and you can’t take any real close-ups (I’ll have something say about that too) but for the most part the latest iPhones and Samsungs are absolutely brilliant.

Aside from being able to do all the other useful things – finding your way home if you’re lost, browsing the web, dealing with emails, recording voices, shooting videos, oh I could go on – I’ve found that as a journalist my Samsung with its 8 megapixel camera is outstanding. While magazines and newspapers don’t like to handle photos that have been adjusted with an app, for your personal use the apps that are available on these phones turn average pictures into something special.

There’s one other advantage of taking pictures on a phone-cam – immediacy. Take a shot and within seconds it can be zooming its way to Flickr or Facebook or Twitter or whoever, not to mention attaching it to an email to send to an outlet that requires a full resolution, un-tampered with, picture. Unless you have a high-end camera that allows you to send a picture wirelessly to your phone or computer for on-sending, you can’t work with the same speed as a phone-cam. The time will come, of course, when the humble point and shoot will join the ranks of its higher-end brethren and have the ability to send its pictures from within its own brain. By then, though, it might be too late – the omnipotent phone-cam will probably be ruling the roost.

I’ve been reading the signs from camera suppliers who admit that the improvements in phone-cams are having a negative effect on sales of cheaper point and shoot cameras. Why bother buying an ‘ordinary camera’ when a good cellphone/mobile phone does much the same job and in many ways does it better? The phone-cam is also always in your pocket or bag ready for that instant picture – because you’re always carrying your phone.

Of course, there isn’t much scope for manual adjustments on a phone-cam, although the time will come when we’ll be able to work our phone-cams just like we would a normal camera….manual focus (hey, who needs that these days), aperture and shutter-speed adjustments and ISO variations.

A word about zoom and close-ups. Some firms are offering attachments for phone-cams that will give you a telephoto, wide angle or close up lens. I’ve read comments that say they aren’t particular effective but the time will come when phone-cams will have their own quality moveable lenses. As an experiment, I’ve jammed a mini-telescope (I call it a monocular) against the lens of my Samsung GalaxyS2 and, after a lot of fiddling, have been able to create unbelievable pictures  of subjects a long way away.

The same, in reverse, applies with close ups. I found an old loupe (a film transparency magnifier) in the cupboard and used that to take startling close-ups of beetles in the garden. A clumsy way of going about it, but it’s pretty obvious to me that the time will come when such pictures will be possible on your phone-cam.

Professional photographers, of course, will continue to use their high-end SLRs with their brilliant lenses and adaptability, but stepping down into the mass market I can see the point and shoot suffering against improved phone-cams. However, I must admit I do not like holding the phone up to my face and lining up a shot – I find I have a much better ‘feel’ for the picture looking through a viewfinder. Perhaps I’ll get used to it.

In the meantime, I have to go…there are pictures out there waiting to be taken. Guess what with?

A Camera Club captured against the setting sun - with an iPhone

Wherever I go, I always try to carry a small camera with me for that unexpected scene that will make a picture.

Just recently, while doing my dog-walking duty in a Sydney park at sunset I realised I’d left my camera behind. And then, inevitably, I came across a whimsical scene that had me reaching for the camera that wasn’t there! Curiously, it was a camera club, whose members had gathered on a hill to photograph the city as it began to switch on its evening lights. They were silhouetted against the setting sun, like figures in an Arthur Rackham fairy story illustration.

Thankfully I had my iPhone but thought ‘this is really going to put it to the test’. Extreme light striking the lens and, unlike the camera club, no tripod to assist stability. However, taking a ‘risky’ photo was better than taking no picture at all.

I was surprised by the result. What do you think?

A Peaceful Moment in a Graveyard. (c) Richard Shears

I found her in a graveyard, sitting with a white dog on a tombstone. I had an hour to spare so I decided to sling a camera over my shoulder and wander around an old churchyard containing the graves of early pioneers to Australia. The ancient cemetery, in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, was totally deserted…except for the figure I noticed sitting on a tomb.

It was an extraordinary scene, so surreal. I slowly approached and asked if I could take a picture. She smiled and nodded in agreement. I took just four shots. I didn’t ask her to pose. I didn’t ask her to move. I just let her sit there because there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the picture that I wanted to change. Everything worked. The overhanging branch provided an upper ‘frame’ and the gravestone on the right provided a perfect balance to the lady, the carved figure on the headstone adding to the balance, for she was facing my accidental model.

And she did indeed look like a model. Her strong features were enhanced by her shaven head, the position of her slender arm a copy of the pose adopted by her dog. If I had taken her into the graveyard for a photo shoot I don’t think I could have done better than the scene that I’d walked into by chance.

Four photos were enough. I had no right to impose further. She seemed to be so much at peace. The inscription on the nearby headstone – ‘Sacred’ – emphasised the stillness of that place. I ventured to ask her for her name: Heather.

I thanked her and wandered off. A short time later, as I made my way out of the churchyard, I thought I would thank her again. The tombstone was empty. The lady and her dog had disappeared.

Curious Scene on a Volcano

I ask ‘what on earth?’ because this photographer was only just on earth – on the top of Japan’s Mt Aso volcano, the biggest volcano in Japan and one of the largest in the world.

I took the picture back in the 1970s while travelling with my trusty Olympus OM1, loaded with Tri-X black and white film, on the southern island of Kyushu, following in the footsteps of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Regarded as the father of modern photo-journalism, he captured a powerful picture of two men near the smoking rim of the volcano in 1965.

When I went there the volcano was pumping out so much ash visibility was down to just a few yards. I became lost in thick swirling white clouds on the mountain trail but then to my astonishment I came across this curious scene – a commercial photographer, protected from the billowing ash by a plastic poncho, waiting for tourists who might want their photo taken. As you can imagine, there appeared to be no-one on the mountain but the photographer and me. We nodded to one another, I took his picture, he didn’t take mine, and I made my way slowly back to ground level.

Merry Christmas from a west Papuan tribe

A merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all. I took this picture in the wilds of west Papua during a controversy over whether the blood of remote tribal people should be used to find out if there was a gene in it that killed cancer. American researchers were working on this 15 years ago – and the world is still waiting!

In the meantime these folks wished me to pass on their good wishes to the outside world, so I hope they’ll be happy with me taking the liberty to include Christmas.

Master Putters.... ©

I took this and a series of pictures during a visit to Malaysia. These guys were part of a stage show, demonstrating their skills at putting. Their trainer told me they’d also shown their prowess on a nearby golf course and they were ready to take on all challengers.

Enough said. I took up the challenge and the following day we headed to the championship course. Hey, they were good. Too good. Over three holes (orang-utans do get bored) I was hammered. Mind you, they did cheat, kicking my ball into the bushes and knocking it into a pond, but on the putting green they were true professionals. Two winning holes to the apes, one to me. Boo.

I should point out that these orang-utans were rescued by the owner from a circus and had already been trained to perform before he acquired them. My inquiries revealed there was little hope of rehabilitating them back to the wild and they were best left to enjoy the life they were currently living. They loved mixing with people, they were happy, under no stress and, I was reliably informed, should be left to live out their old age with humans.

As for those other unfortunate animals that are losing their habitat and are killed or harmed in clashes with humans taking over their environment for profit – look at the palm oil industry which is destroying their forests – I’m right behind the fight to keep their natural homes. More on this in the new year.

(More pictures in the photo gallery and through Rex Features of London)

Milla Jovovich poses for me on a remote beach in Fiji

Sorry guys – to all of you who are fans of Ukrainian-born American model and movie star Milla Jovovich – she posed for me first. I took this picture of Milla in Fiji in 1990 when she was starring in Return to the Blue Lagoon. Then in her teens, she was clearly star material but what struck me most about her was her polite manner and the patience she displayed as we walked around the shore and stumbled through the nearby jungle to find the best locations for a photo shoot.

You can see more of my pictures of Milla in the photo gallery.

(Nikon F3 35mm and 300mm lenses).

Dusk at the end of a life of poverty

Browsing through thousands of pictures I’ve taken over the years, I came across this one I took in 1976 of an old woman in a sun-parched Indian village. Her stretched ear lobes are a result of having her ears pierced as a child, then wearing heavy bangles throughout her 80 years. She was living in poverty, just her, a few other villagers, a couple of cows…and the merciless sun. (Olympus OM1, Tri-X, D76). See another picture in the Photo Gallery.

Indian women work in a quarry

In a quarry in the Indian Punjab, just off the famous Grand Trunk Road, workers, many of them women, shift gravel. Picture was taken in 1974 as I drove past in an old van I had driven from London.