When a cameraphone’s the only camera at hand
My friend Judy visited the Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden yesterday. She wrote to say she had a great time but she didn’t bring her camera. “I wasn’t sure if they were allowed and didn’t remember from the past….didn’t want to take the chance since they check your bags before you enter MSG and confiscate stuff. Anyway, I was probably the only person there without one.”
I replied to say that she needed to get a cameraphone. “Then, at least, you will have some sort of camera with you all the time.”
I know my photographer friends are rolling their eyes right now. A cameraphone?
Yes, a cameraphone. At least you’ll have something to capture the moment. The picture may not be award-winning, but when you look at it weeks, months or years later, you will be reminded of that particular moment. More than just the image within the frame, the picture taken by a cameraphone will bring back the sounds and the smells from that particular day when you’d snapped that picture. When you look at that cameraphone image, you will not think how wonderful the lighting was, or how striking the angle; instead, you will be reminded of how your handphone1 has a camera so that you managed to capture a picture of the Best in Show winner lifting his leg to pee on the cup.
Or maybe like me, the pictures remind you of how the battery in your regular camera died at the wrong moment but the camera in your handphone saved the day.
Yes, it happened to me. I was visiting the giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo in November 2006. While riding the Skyfari, I aimed my camera at the giant panda exhibit below, all ready to take an aerial shot when I saw the low battery warning on the display screen. Next thing I knew, the shutter button froze and the camera went blank on me.
That was it, I thought to myself. No pictures of mama Bai Yun and her cub Su Lin, which I hadn’t taken as they weren’t together when I visited earlier that day. I wandered around the other exhibits. At the polar bear exhibit, I saw someone hold up a phone, and I almost exclaimed out loud.
My handphone, my handphone has a camera! I thought as I took it2 out, turned it on its side, slid open the lens cover and and aimed at one of the polar bears.
And so that was how I managed to capture some mother-and-daughter moments that late November afternoon at the San Diego Zoo. I know the quality’s not great, but they are precious reminders that I was there and saw my giant panda family.
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1handphone – that’s what we call it in Malaysia; elsewhere in the world, I think it’s also called a mobile or a cellphone
2it – my handphone is the Sony Ericsson K750i, not the latest, but it works for me
