I can’t get enough of this little toy camera right now. There’s liberation in making photos of things that 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 a scene isn’t worth the effort of removing them 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 things 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.