Today was errand day at the House of Fielding — errands before and after work. Eastside. Downtown. Uptown. Downtown. Eastside. Westside back home. While riding the streetcars and subways I was experimenting with the cameraphone to see what it was capable of. As with any mobile phone, the best conditions are always bright and outdoors. I was rather pleased with the sharpness of the numbers in the photo above.

You might be wondering: why even bother taking photos with such crappy phone cameras? They look terrible! Because for me what makes a good photo is its composition, and that has nothing to do with equipment. Deciding what to put in that frame is not just an interpretation of electronics and glass but instinct. You can have the most expensive camera in the world, but if the content is uninteresting, a good lens and expensive sensor cannot rescue it. So I am constantly on the lookout for how life fits in frames in interesting ways — what goes in, what stays out, looking ahead for two objects to cross paths at the perfect time, hoping a gust of wind blows that bottle to exactly where I want it, photographing the dog waiting patiently outside the store, watching for the break in the cloud for the sun to peek through. It’s not just taking a photo, it’s how the Germans translate it — “making a photo”. (And probably lots of other languages I don’t know.)

Today was a first, of sorts: I shelled out $15 for a 2GB micro SD card to expand the memory in the phone. Up ’til now I have always been far too cheap to splash out on memory for mobile devices, but the videocamera feature on this one won’t work at ALL without a media card. Previously I’ve always just cleared out photos and text messages (I’ve collected some of the weird ones to show), but I capitulated this time to avoid the dreaded “Memory Full!” message.

Testing how it handles backlighting:

I shot a short video on the streetcar before I had to disembark, and tonight when I converted the video from 3GP to mpeg (using Kigo Video Converter) then mpeg to mp4 (using Handbrake) — and that was after using Bluetooth to transfer the files from the phone to the computer! — the double-conversion somehow had the effect of speeding up the video (this is actual size):

It’s running at twice the original speed!

And finally, a photo taken not with the mobile but the 5-year old Canon A520, which you can buy from eBay these days for less than $10. Did you know there are manual settings on these digicams? It’s true — though limited, I set the aperture and shutter speed myself for this picture:

It was a funny moment that brought me to that tree. I was taking photos of the sunset by a hospital with the phone’s camera, and a patient in a wheelchair watched me take photos of the trees. He was a little far away, so when he called out to me I thought he was checking to see whether I was taking a photo of him (and asking me not to). I indicated I was only shooting the trees. A couple of minutes later, he wheeled up and told me I would find a much better tree next to the building behind some other trees, about 50m away.

“You’ll like that one,” he said excitedly. “It’s very twisty and people like to take pictures of it.”

He was right! And it was then that I figured out he wasn’t shooing me away two minutes before, he was waving me over to the tree!

Another one of the shots from the lakeshore photowalk on Feb 21 that included the Irish Famine Memorial. St. Patty’s day is actually tomorrow, but there was a parade last Sunday, which I missed — again! Argh!

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about St. Patrick’s Day in Canada:

The longest-running Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Canada occurs each year in Montreal, the flag of which has a shamrock in one of its corners. The parades have been held in continuity since 1824.

In the City of Toronto from 1919 to 1927, the Toronto Maple Leafs were known as the Toronto St. Patricks, wore green jerseys. In 1999 when the Leafs played on Hockey Night in Canada (national broadcast of the NHL) on Saint Patrick’s Day, the Leafs wore the green St. Pats retro jersey. There is a large parade in the city’s downtown core that attracts over 100,000 spectators.

Although the baseball season is still in the spring training phase when Saint Patrick’s Day rolls around, the Toronto Blue Jays wear green uniforms for the occasion.[citation needed] The Toronto Raptors professional basketball team also wears a green alternate uniform to celebrate the holiday.

Some groups, notably Guinness, have lobbied to make Saint Patrick’s Day a federal (national) holiday.

In March 2009, the Calgary Tower had changed its top exterior lights to new green-coloured CFL bulbs just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day. The lights were in fact part of the environmental non-profit organization, Project Porchlight, and were Green to represent environmental concerns. Approximately 210 lights were changed in time for Saint Patrick’s Day and almost resemble a Leprechaun’s hat during the evening light. After a week, regular white CFLs took their place, saving the Calgary Tower around $12,000 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 104 metric tonnes in the process.

Anyhow, you can check out everybody else’s St. Patrick’s Day 2010 parade photos that made Flickr’s Explore page here as thumbnails, or a slideshow.

Very spring-like today, so I opted for the streetcar instead of the subway.

Beautiful blooms at The Brides’ Project yesterday, courtesy of Bernard Thibault.

It’s been storming mightily out there, on and off, since Friday. That’s what took down the power on Friday afternoon and hopefully that won’t repeat before it begins to warm up again this week. It’s blowing rain and, ahem, gale force winds…

While I love the deep red tulips, my focus here is on the green roses. I’ve never seen green roses before, and I love this shade of green.

I have to say, even though I now fall in the ranks of the “older generation” and am not a fan of all these Canadian artists, I have nothing curmudgeonly or cynical to say about this remixed version of K’naan’s song. (Does it count if I say I’m glad Nickelback’s not in it?) I did find it mildly amusing that “Young Artists For Haiti” included a few older rockers and stuck them in the back — is that Tom Cochrane at 2:19/3:38 and Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo at 2:22?

In fact, as a song and as a video, I like it very much. I’ve watched it several times and grow to like it a little more each time. As well, there are images that really hit home, eg. the tiny child with the big eyes and wee smile at 3:56 tugged at my heartstrings at every video play. It is aimed to inspire a younger generation (and I believe it will), their voices sound great, and the message isn’t drowned out by “oversinging” like the kind you would find in a show like Idol. I also liked that they included at least a bit of French!

The version that’s on the CBC website is longer and includes part of an interview with K’naan and spokespeople for the three Canadian humanitarian charities which benefit from the sales of the song and video. Links are here:

Young Artists For Haiti (official site): http://www.youngartistsforhaiti.net/
(purchase the mp3 for C$1.29, video for C$2.29)
Young Artists For Haiti (Facebook site): http://www.facebook.com/youngartistsforhaiti

World Vision Canada: http://www.worldvision.ca/
Free the Children: http://www.freethechildren.com/
War Child: http://www.warchild.ca/

Which was thankfully restored before it became completely dark.

This is why:

1. The wireless company gave me the Blackberry for free.
2. I’ve kept all my features, except free incoming call airtime (it was the only one I couldn’t transfer from the basic handset to the smartphone) without being subjected to price increases, and locked in the price for two years.
3. My new plan that includes smartphone data (versus the unlimited PCS data I had before) is only $2.30 more per month than what I paid previously.
4. My 100 minutes per month free long distance would expire in August.
5. I couldn’t check my Mobile Me email on the old browser.

The iPod Touch will still get used daily, but since I can only use it with wi-fi, I couldn’t pass up a free phone upgrade. We’ll see if my cameraphone shots look any better!

It’s been warm all this week and I set up a tall kitchen stool by the front window for the beasties to catch morning sun. The chair has a seat barely wide enough to accommodate the two of them, yet they both insist on watching the world go by from this perch, which results in bickering, the occasional smack with the paw, and begrudging co-existence.