Cell phone photography: friend or foe?

Students walk quickly to buildings to escape the cold.

Merrick Street in the chilling afternoon.

       After working on the cell phone photography assignment, I’ve come to see cell phones as a quick fix with messy consequences. I’ve had an Instagram for the past few years but created a new one for professional use and I wish I could have posted these photos with a heavy amount of filters.

       My subject for the week was the cold temperatures and winds in the campus wind tunnels. Wayne State has walkways that often feel like you’re walking through a Category 5 hurricane and I wanted to get a picture on a day when students weren’t forced to walk backwards against the onslaught of ice-cold air.

       I think Digital Photography School’s Tips for Improving Camera Phone Photos has great tips but for the most part they apply to indoors. The photos I took this week were outdoors, in the biting cold and I stayed away from all the don’ts of the list. Though the shadow cast over the walkway gives it a more gloomy effect, I wish my puny iPhone 4 had a powerful enough flash to light the area.

A small town girl with a Nikon camera

Studying journalism wasn’t a natural choice. After a mental back-and-forth battle between going to art school and getting an English degree, I made a peace treaty on the terms of happiness and reporting with a dash of art to bind them together.

I am a daughter, sister and aunt hailing from a small town in Downriver, a community of nearly 20 cities and townships south of Detroit, and I have traveled all over the United States and still love my hometown.

There are three things I am a die-hard nerd about: Shakespeare, music and art. I love writing about music, life and dogs and I love taking photos of anything my eyes land on.

In the words of photographer Bruno Barbey, “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”