Monday, August 21

This photograph may not look like much but it signals a major change in my approach to a lot of things.

Ever since I began this project in 2010 I have used a mobile phone to take the daily images, and have viewed them as sketches of photographs that I might have taken, had I had a proper camera. I started this in order to train my visual perception; to make sure I saw rather than merely looked. Lately, however, I have become dissatisfied with the quality of the images, especially when I see them as opposed to merely glancing or looking at them.

I talked about this over the weekend, triggered by some photographs I saw Irma take with her OnePlus. I talked about getting a better phone with a “proper” camera. Irma responded by digging out an old Canon Powershot SX240 we have had in a drawer for years; long enough for the manual to refer to Windows 7.

I took this photograph just now using the optical zoom on the Powershot and ended up with an image I simply could not have got using my phone, and probably not by using the OnePlus. It turns out that I don’t need a new phone. I need the phone I have and a pocket camera.

Now for some new experiments. I need to see what happens to my workflow if I use the Powershot, and how best I can easily get the images onto my iPad for post-production, and then here…