PHONY-NESS

When is a phone not a phone? When it's a camera!

Mairi gave me a new mobile phone - a Nokia 6300. While I am ready, off-the-mark with the internet technology, i.e. email when it first came out (when was that?) and spending far to many hours surfing the web, I have never taken to mobile phones or should I say, mobile phone technology.

However, put a camera into it and I'm away laughing and dancing! I just love using a digital camera and once I decided to treat my new phone as a camera with a phone facility I got on a lot better.

These photos are my first test drive: Saturday shopping in Glasogw. My goodness but the streets are lively. By that I don't mean packed out with shoppers (in this climate of Credit Crunch) but alive with sounds of drummers and one (obligatory?) piper.

I am very impressed with the quality of the photo! Simply amazing technology, to my way of thinking! Yes, I had the setting at High Res. which meant I could only take a few photos. I have now learned where the Preference setting is located and have re-set it to Low Res. as the most I will ever do is put them on my blog.

Not one, but two, groups of drummers on Buchanan Street! Just look at these 60 year olds giving it lalldy! Ooops, the piper must be one of their sons or a camp follower.

Now this photo (above) is fuzzy. I have not mastered the art of holding the camera steady. I guess the trick is to tuck your elbow into your hip all the time trying to click using one hand.

The sound of a corp of drummers is very magnetic, i.e. one just has to change one's direction of travel (for me, it was heading to Princes Square) and go and see - I was going to say, 'listen' but you could hear them a mile away !

Glaswegians are very generous and this shot gives a typical gesture seen out on the street.

Lastly this was my first attempt at using the camera facility in the phone. I felt so self-conscious that the only photos I took were waist high! This is the entrance to a doorway in one of the many stone buildings of Victorian architecture in the city centre. Again the clarity of the test photo is astonishing for such a little, hand-held, size of kit!