Photography tips for your cell phone camera

March 27, 2:53 PMAtlanta Photography ExaminerAnthony R Socci

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Sepia Image # 1                        Black and White Image #2

In my last micro-epistle I attempted to pique your interest in that mini modern marvel called the cell phone because of its additional abilities as a bona fide instrument for recording still images. This article will show you the development (pun intended) of my portrait that you see on my masthead.

As a professional photographer I like to practice what I preach in updating my personal portraits. Face it. You look different from your last portrait which was probably taken (let me guess) at your college graduation. No? It went back even farther to your high school graduation, right? Nice hair! Did you pick out that paisley shirt all by yourself or was it a graduation gift? I see you blushing! All right let’s get back to how my portrait got updated for this electronic column.

I needed something to demonstrate the cell phone camera’s abilities so I started by searching the camera settings on my trusty LG Chocolate. Looking through the options I moved from “normal” and selected “sepia”. Next I set the metering on “average” and the resolution at maximum which is 1280x960 and the white balance (Read color temperature.) on “auto” which allows the camera to decide on what’s white and what’s not.

Nobody was home except my resident cat Tigre, and she was busy sleeping on the sofa so I couldn’t ask her to take my picture. That left my right hand as the only volunteer since there is no tripod mounting options on the LG.

All right Tony, hold the camera at arm’s length, guess where it’s pointed and push the button for the first exposure. Nice photo of the top of my head and the west corner of my room! There was also considerable camera shake, so I turned on the camera’s self timer and set it for five seconds. Try, try again.

I experimented with different “arm lengths” and got my face to fill the screen, but that made my nose look way too big! Full “arm length” was best so I continued guessing as to where I should point the lens until I finally came up with the right combination of “you look somewhat intelligent” and “you’re included in the frame.” (See photo #1 above.)

This photo is what I settled on because I could see the potential in it. No, it’s not a great photo, but it is a reasonable facsimile so I imported it into the other indispensable tool in my digital world called “iPhoto”.

Let me digress for a paragraph:
    It took a long time for me to give up my trusty 6x6 centimeter film cameras, but Dr. Wayne Dyer told me in one of his books, “Once you stretch a balloon to a new dimension, it can never go back to its original shape.”  I’ve been digitally stretched; thank you, Dr. Dyer.

I opened Photoshop on my Big Mac, as I call my trusty Apple G4, recently upgraded computer. The first thing I noticed about my photo was the sepia tone. It’s not a true sepia tone and looks way too orange for my taste so I turned it into a plain black and white. That’s better, but there are distractions in the upper left and right corners and there’s too much of me for the space alloted on my Examiner masthead. No problem, just use the crop tool but before I pressed the “OK” button, I rotated my image to a more masculine pose. (More to come on masculine and feminine poses so be sure to come back!) Next came some tweaking of the highlights and shadows, and finally, brightness and contrast. The only remaining task was to size my portrait for the web. Done. (See image #2 above.)

Ready? Set? Post! "Here’s looking at you, kid.”