Kevin and I spent much of Sunday evening and Monday learning to take pictures. This might seem like a silly project; but he is hoping to sell a couple of pieces of furniture and has not had much luck in getting the pictures taken. So we got very creative and decided to see how well we did with this.
So how did we do it?
First, we took many trial pictures so that I could learn to aim correctly. I have taken a couple of pictures in the past, though they were not very good. My past attempts consisted of attempting to line up the object and the viewer tactually, then back away for a better distance shot, take the picture, then get feedback on how the picture came out. The feedback often consisted of comments like, “You cut off the top left corner,” “You’re too close,” or, “That’s a great shot of the ceiling!” Over time, I learned how to line up the viewer tactually as well as (when the lighting was adequate for my use) do it by lining my face up and then line the viewer up under my eye instead of looking through it. Teaching this technique to Kevin was challenging enough. On top of it, he had to teach me a thing or two about the IPhone, which I have never used.
Much of our feedback during this process came from volunteers at the VizWiz service. This resulted in a good bit of hilarity. We could imagine them messaging us back after so many tries… Our first attempts were about trying to figure out whether the phone would pick up our fingers if we held it in certain ways. We imagined the volunteers sending us messages saying, “Please stop taking pictures of your thumbs,” or, “Please stop sending us the same pictures over and over.” The encouraging parts came when the automated engine messaged us back correctly with the identification of what we had taken a picture of. There was some information they did not give us. It helps to ask clear questions when the feedback providers are not your friends–they will answer only what you ask and will not tell you that while you managed to take a picture of this chair, you also took a picture of a big box.
We discovered that the phone moving every time I double tapped on it to take the picture, whed messed up my oh-so-careful work in planning. I got one good picture of his chair–after some 10 attempts. (I celebrated with a chocolate bar!) But I kept getting the couch off center.
Dad came up with the solution for this problem. I set up a stool opposite the center cushion of the couch at the distance I had been using so that I could put the phone on it and take the picture from the front of the stool. No more pictures of the ceiling or cut off top corners. I won’t be taking pictures of people’s weddings, but it was a fun experiment. For more fun, I might attempt to tackle the project of taking a picture of Kevin and his daughter. The phone might help with this. If I point it at people, it actually says, “one face,” “two faces,” etc. It could be amusing for everyone. I’d like to know if it recognizes my dog’s face as a face. Loretta, by the way, seemed to enjoy crashing my photos. I think she must be some kind of limelight seeker even if the producer is bad.
I’ll post the pictures tomorrow–I’m falling asleep.
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