Camera Phone Heresies: Pampered in Luxury

The photographer's feet and cankles taking a respite

DoubleTree Hotel, Minneapolis, October 2010

I am no member of the unwashed hoi polloi, which you often see frequenting such abodes of iniquity as WalMart, Motel 6, and the Tea Party movement.  No, not I.

Rather, I am a member of the great, upwardly mobile mittelbrowkeit, and if you wish to find me basking in the lap of luxury, look no farther than the plush digs at the DoubleTree Suites in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  What luxury!  Why, for $199 per night, I can sit in a tub in which the tiles are definitely a notch or two higher class than you'd find at any such bourgeoise lodgings, like Best Western, or Howard Johnson's.  Talk about culture -- why just look at the culture growing on the grout of these obviously more refined shower tiles. This must be what they mean by the "beyond," as in "Bed, Bath, and ...."

When I jet-set about the Heartland of the great old U.S. of A., I'm proud to be staying at such a well-appointed spot as the DoubleTree.  Because, when I want to be whisked away to a swanky joint like this one, I certainly don't want the mould on the soap dish to be anything less than the finest aged soap dish mould.

Camera Phone Heresies

Pixley Tire Shop, Pixley, California, November 2009

I pulled off California State Highway 99 to photograph this tire shop.  Tire shops and corrugated metal have always held a special fascination for me.

At that particular time, I was using my Nikon FM-3A (the last generation of the famous Nikon F/FM series professional manual camera bodies), which was loaded with Kodak Tri-X.  Having exposed the last frame, I was about to return to my car when this little boy happened by.  

Thinking on my feet, with no time to reload, I took my Motorola cell phone from my pocket and snapped this picture up.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you my deep-seated loathing for digital photography.  To me, it's cheating -- damned if I'm going to just flush thirty-plus years of acquired knowledge of real photography down the drain just because somebody invented a way to mimic photography.

But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  Which means, don't let a great photo opportunity pass you by just because you're a retrograde purist (such as I) standing on ceremony.