Cell Phone Photography Art and New Baby


You may have noticed and wondered about the lack of blog posts recently. My life has forever changed with the birth of my son, Winston born on July 10th. This blog has been my labor of love and now every single waking moment is consumed by a beautiful, little human being that smells like sweet milk.

The past few weeks have been filled with sleepless nights of feedings every 2 hours, diaper changes, burping, swaddling, doctor’s visits, watching him sleep, worrying, admiring his little fingers and toes, waiting for his belly button to heal, sponge baths, watching him grow, more worrying…

Who knew such a hectic existence could be so gratifying and filled with love?

As a photographer, motherhood has been bittersweet. I want to capture everything with my camera yet I fear the time spent behind it will mean I’m not fully present and enjoying each unique and fleeting moment with my child. Yet how can I vividly reminisce about those moments later if I haven’t photographed them?

Baby bump – 33 weeks, Copyright Qiana Mestrich

After getting laid off from work late June, I’d planned to document the last few weeks of my pregnancy. I was inspired by this photo (above, taken with my Nikon D200) of my bump at 33 weeks where my belly button had finally begun to pop out.

Now I’ve all but abandoned my digital SLR. The 5MP camera on my HTC Hero mobile phone has taken its place: with one hand I can quickly whip it out, compose and shoot. This convenience is all too important when holding a baby.

The phone’s versatile camera settings even allows you to set the ISO from 100 to 800 and more! The “Grayscale” effect has actually renewed my interest in shooting B&W again…

This is one of my favorite mobile phone photography shots I’ve taken of baby Winston:

 Baby Winston & Daddy on a Sunday morning, Copyright Qiana Mestrich

I’m a believer in the mobile phone photography genre and now there’s a social media platform where you can share your tiny shots with the world, it’s called EYE’EM. I’ve just created my own profile and you can too – just use this special invitation code EYEEMHAPPY1. Warning this code is only valid for 29 accounts. If it doesn’t work for you, just sign up on the EYE’EM site and request one.

Follow EYE’EM on Twitter @eyeem and on Facebook.

Still doubt that you can take great shots with a cell phone camera? Check out the iPhoneography of Jeremy Edwards.

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