I turn my camera on
Feb. 7th, 2008 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"I stand by [President George W. Bush]. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound ... with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."
- Stephen Colbert, 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner
The primary purpose of this quotation is to introduce the following picture, taken at Washington D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery during the two-week period in which Stephen Colbert's trademark canvas was on display between the East Wing's second floor washrooms.
This photo was taken with my very own Motorola RAZR v3m, which is the primary reason it looks like such crap. It is also the segue to today's topic: cameras.
I've never owned a nice camera, or even a halfway decent camera. The last camera I owned was a $20 digital camera in a box, about the size and density of a brick; it lasted a year until the lens somehow fogged up, making all my pictures look like a soft-focus Barbara Walters interview. Before and since then, I have relied on disposable cameras, which have come a long way in the past decade. But it still feels kind of like collecting sports memorabilia: joyless, wasteful and immature.
I do have a video camera, a gratuitous impulse purchase during a bout of post-Christmas commercial somnambulism two years ago, but I rarely ever use it. When I bought it I had all of these ideas about recording all sorts of fun things and editing them together like an MTV video, but it did not occur to me until too late that I was unable to operate the camera and perform in front of it at the same time. Like my phone, it has a still photo function, but its resolution is actually even worse, such that a mere portrait could easily be mistaken for a lunar eclipse.
So there have been plenty of opportunities for me to buy a real camera, but I always found petty reasons for rationalizing the temptation away, such as prohibitive cost, lack of technical photographic skill and/or artistry, constantly evolving technology and the worry of instant obsolescence, unwillingness to schlep the damned thing all over the place, fear of losing it or leaving it somewhere, effective reliance on the camerawork of friends and others, not to mention the superior quality and reliability of postcards, ever-increasing national and global restrictions on photographic practices, and current inefficiencies with storage of existing pictures. But like I said, those are all fairly petty, especially when I think about how much I've sunk into those disposable cameras, not to mention traditional film processing.
I also have deeper, more philosophical reasons for not having a camera.
Like the theory that I don't need a camera, because I consider myself a high-falutin' writer, and I ought to be able to rely on my own visions and memories and translate them into purer keepsakes by describing them verbally. Of course, this is total horsecrap. In the real world, writing and photography are not mutually exclusive.
Also, there's the idea that I wanted to be able to go on a vacation, or to a museum or a party or whatever, and actually experience and enjoy it rather than working to document it. I worry that the time spent taking pictures is time I could have spent soaking in the atmosphere. This is also sort of baloney, because it's not like I'd be lighting F-stops or whatever; it's just amateur photography, and there would theoretically be plenty of time for soaking in the recorded images.
So I guess I don't really have any good excuses for not having my own camera. In fact, considering that my girlfriend is totally hot and I'm not exactly getting any cuter, there are more reasons to have a camera than not.
If only they could find a way to put a phone in the camera.
- Stephen Colbert, 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner
The primary purpose of this quotation is to introduce the following picture, taken at Washington D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery during the two-week period in which Stephen Colbert's trademark canvas was on display between the East Wing's second floor washrooms.
This photo was taken with my very own Motorola RAZR v3m, which is the primary reason it looks like such crap. It is also the segue to today's topic: cameras.
I've never owned a nice camera, or even a halfway decent camera. The last camera I owned was a $20 digital camera in a box, about the size and density of a brick; it lasted a year until the lens somehow fogged up, making all my pictures look like a soft-focus Barbara Walters interview. Before and since then, I have relied on disposable cameras, which have come a long way in the past decade. But it still feels kind of like collecting sports memorabilia: joyless, wasteful and immature.
I do have a video camera, a gratuitous impulse purchase during a bout of post-Christmas commercial somnambulism two years ago, but I rarely ever use it. When I bought it I had all of these ideas about recording all sorts of fun things and editing them together like an MTV video, but it did not occur to me until too late that I was unable to operate the camera and perform in front of it at the same time. Like my phone, it has a still photo function, but its resolution is actually even worse, such that a mere portrait could easily be mistaken for a lunar eclipse.
So there have been plenty of opportunities for me to buy a real camera, but I always found petty reasons for rationalizing the temptation away, such as prohibitive cost, lack of technical photographic skill and/or artistry, constantly evolving technology and the worry of instant obsolescence, unwillingness to schlep the damned thing all over the place, fear of losing it or leaving it somewhere, effective reliance on the camerawork of friends and others, not to mention the superior quality and reliability of postcards, ever-increasing national and global restrictions on photographic practices, and current inefficiencies with storage of existing pictures. But like I said, those are all fairly petty, especially when I think about how much I've sunk into those disposable cameras, not to mention traditional film processing.
I also have deeper, more philosophical reasons for not having a camera.
Like the theory that I don't need a camera, because I consider myself a high-falutin' writer, and I ought to be able to rely on my own visions and memories and translate them into purer keepsakes by describing them verbally. Of course, this is total horsecrap. In the real world, writing and photography are not mutually exclusive.
Also, there's the idea that I wanted to be able to go on a vacation, or to a museum or a party or whatever, and actually experience and enjoy it rather than working to document it. I worry that the time spent taking pictures is time I could have spent soaking in the atmosphere. This is also sort of baloney, because it's not like I'd be lighting F-stops or whatever; it's just amateur photography, and there would theoretically be plenty of time for soaking in the recorded images.
So I guess I don't really have any good excuses for not having my own camera. In fact, considering that my girlfriend is totally hot and I'm not exactly getting any cuter, there are more reasons to have a camera than not.
If only they could find a way to put a phone in the camera.
