On a recent trip in a car as a passenger, over an extended period of time, I had another go at making images using my Sony Ericsson K610i 2 mega-pixel camera. The results reminded me of the now famous image by Lartigue, and I decided to try and produce a body of work while in the car.
I was happy with about 12 or so of the shots. They now form my first series based around the idea first popularised by Lartigue with his image entitled, ‘Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour 1913’.
This of course gives rise to the idea that photography can still surprise and delight with the way it freezes and captures time.
Technically I think that the reason the poles and verticals look slanted in the images captured by a mobile phone camera pointed at 90 degrees to the direction that the vehicle is travelling is because it is a leaf shutter. The objects that are closest to the camera show the effect the most, with the speed of the vehicle is a determining factor also.
The real magic here is that the images themselves were a real surprise, and a little difficult to predict bringing back that real magical feeling that goes with the act of using a simple machine to freeze/capture/distort the world as it passes.
yeah, i had a photo from my Nokia 6600 that demonstrated this perfectly, 'cause i moved during the shot and so half of my face is sorta warped to one side. Not sure what happened to it, though...
Eureka! as they say in the classics, makes more sense now, thanks hamish
Will definitely be trying this out. I reckon it's because the image is "scanned" line by line rather than captured all at once. So lines at the top are imaged a little while before those at the bottom. Like the reverse of a CRT screen.