I can’t get enough of this toy camera right now. There’s creative freedom in making photos of things I might not notice when using a more serious camera. Maybe I’ve developed a touch of snobbishness when using a Nikon or a Sony or an Olympus, as though only select scenes are worthy of the effort to pull pricier cameras from my shoulder bag.
Toy cameras, very far from the realms of technical perfection, allow a broader and more playful view of the world. They turn ordinary scenes into immersive moments: “That reflection in the window really is interesting and worthy of my time and attention!”. In this way, the eye is developed – the imagination fired – and the less serious camera becomes a tool that leads to the present moment playfully and without internal pressure and the solemn rituals surrounding serious gear.
Once again, I’m experimenting with my custom Exposure X7 colour preset to add some film grain, enhance the washed out colours, and blur textures and digital sharpness.
Admittedly, geometric arrangements like this always catch my eye, toy camera in hand or not. Dirty laneways in the city, home to rubbish bins, brown puddles, and the ugly backdoors of mall-way businesses that prefer to present a prettier face to the public, are ripe for wandeing on cloudy days with a camera ready.
I think sometimes we’ve forgotten just how amazing it is that we can record a unique slice of time. Maybe our image-obsessed and image-saturated culture has turned precious moments into tired throwaway pixels to be shared on social media – cheaply tossed atop the digital mountain for endless scrolling and potentially harmful social comparison.
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Funny . . . I look to get rid of grain while you look to add some. Of course, I call it noise, and who doesn’t want to get rid of noise, eh? I’m actually looking forward to working to improve those apparently less-than-stellar images, not degrade them (beauty, eye, beholder, etc.).
I’m having to wait two weeks before I get mine. We’ll see if I’m as joyful as you are . . . but, I have to ask . . . didn’t you already walk around with a pocket camera (the phone)?
I take lots of images with the phone that are just for me, thinks that caught my attention but don’t translate into photos I normally share (maybe I should!), interesting stuff like you describe (well, not exactly the same . . . I shoot anything that grabs my attention, and it seldom involves grime, especially since I avoid grimy places).
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Well, the original images are already oversmoothed pretty aggressively by the camera. The noise I add is essentially scanned film grain, so it’s much more random than digital noise. Some people find that lack of uniformity more pleasing. In these cases, adding it disguises some of the original digital oversharpened edges and oversmoothed areas. In this sense, it is an improvement. You can’t smooth or sharpen already aggressively smoothed or sharpened areas without losing more, in my opinion. Of course, I have the phone. I just don’t find it fun. I find it boring. These images are not about quality. I cannot think anyone would expect great images from a plastic toy. Working within the narrow limits of this toy is fun for me. Squeezing the most from it is fun. Sometimes I want the best, so I grab the Nikon. Other times, I just want a fun experiment, hence this plastic toy camera. You won’t find it makes quality photos. If taken for what it is, it can be a bit of fun. And right now, I need that sense of fun. Cheers.
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