America through a camera phone (Photo by John Schrieber, The Daily Campus)
Put a top of the line camera phone into the hands of an award winning photographer and you get Robert Clark along with hundreds of spontaneous, but fascinating images.
Professional freelance photographer Clark, whose photos have appeared in such publications as National Geographic, Time, and Sports Illustrated and graced more than 100 book covers, visited campus Friday to take pictures as part of the Image America Tour.
The tour, sponsored by Sony Ericsson, sent Clark on a two-month trip across the United States armed with an S710a camera phone and his Volkswagen Eurovan. “The idea behind Image America was to show the versatility of the camera along with the diversity of the country because I think the two go hand-in-hand,” Clark said.
Clark was handed a camera phone by Sony Ericsson to see if he could actually get quality images with it. Once he began to produce publishable photos, Sony allowed him to set an itinerary for his tour.
Since the grand tour started on February 23, he has traveled from New York to as far west as Nevada and is planning to stop in such cities as Austin, Houston and New Orleans once he leaves Dallas. Clark says the trip has been an interesting experience. “It’s been a dream assignment in a lot of ways because I can pretty much stop and shoot anything I want,” he said. “It’s been a terrific trip.”
Shooting with a camera phone has posed some challenges for Clark, who sometimes wishes he had a wider range of lens choice. However, the simplicity of the camera phone has allowed him to concentrate on the more important aspects of
photography. Clark, who is used to traveling on assignment with 10-12 cases of equipment and two assistants, says his 4.2 by 2 inch camera phones are a bit easier to manage. The sheer simplicity and small size of the phone “lets me concentrate on the design of the photo … or the emotional content of the person.” Any limitation the camera presents “is really more about what is your limitation in terms of being creative with composition and thinking.”
Clark believes that cell phone technology and camera phones are “going to get better and better and better because that is going to be a selling point for the phone and the service.” Along with the convenience of a phone and camera in one, Clark thinks the camera phones will lead to more amateur photography and “any increase in artistic or creative expression is going to lead to an improvement in quality in somebody’s life.”
The three S710a phones that Clark carries boast 1.3 mega pixels, 8x digital zoom, 2.3-inch screen along with video capabilities and standard 32 megabytes of storage. They can be found for as low as $300 online.
When Robert finishes his tour April 19, he will keep plenty busy working on his three books that he is doing for the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. As for all the pictures Robert is taking, he plans to make a book out of them that is set to come out May 19. In addition, his photographs will be on display at the International Center of Photography in New York and published in American Photo.
To see Robert’s work from his Image America Tour and his pictures of Texas, you can visit www.americanphotomag.com/robertclark.
