Call this a Blog Circle, Jazmin, Traci Bunkers and I decided we’re all write on the same subject this week. Our topic for the week is: Using photography and photos in our art journals.

I’ve been talking to Jazmin aka Sirensidyll about how we both use cameras in our art journals. The more I talked to her the more I realize that my cameras are an integral part of my art journaling process. I have a camera in my bag pretty much everywhere I go. Here’s a brief overview of the cameras I use:
My iPod touch
A Canon Ixus 1100
and a Olympus Pen PL2 with a variety of vintage lenses

In the past, before I got the iPod touch I used my Canon Ixus point and shoot more often than I do now. It was small and I could slip it into my bag and take it anywhere. My Canon P&S takes great clear pictures. Now that I have an iPod touch 4th generation I’ve got a smaller camera I can take anywhere. The photos it takes are not as good as the Canon but it does a pretty good job. Additionally I can download a bunch of cool apps for my iPod that adapt and change the appearance of the image. I take one of these 2 with me everywhere.

In the summer I take my Olympus Pen PL2 with me almost everywhere. I purchased a few vintage lenses and an adapter so that the old manual lenses can be used. The old fashioned and antique lenses lend a different look and coloration than modern lenses. With the vintage or new lenses it takes sharp crisp photos with great color.

I use the iPoo for 90% of my image (not accurate mathmatically.) It’s so small and portable that I forget I’m carrying it. I don’t worry about dropping it, well much, and it doesn’t weight me down. Sure, it doesn’t have fancy lenses but it captures ideas as well as a thumbnail sketch.

Something that is unusual about photography,  at least for me, is that I didn’t start taking pictures until I was in my last year at college. For that last year, I used disposable point and shoot cameras that I took to the local pharmacy for development. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I got my first “real” camera, a Canon ELPH, and it took bright crisp and clear images. I still have that camera, though I never use it. Shortly after that I got my first digital, and HP something or the other, a 1.2 mega pixel brick, and by brick, I mean it was brick sized, shaped and weight. After using that camera to it’s death I graduated to a Canon Digital ELPH and kept it for years.

Wednesday we’ll all talk about what apps and programs we use to manipulate our images. Check out Jazmin and Traci's posts on their blogs.

All images in this blog post were shot with my iPoo touch 4th gen I'll talk about the apps I use in the next post. (I refer to my iP0d as the iPoo to avoid attracting attention from the spam brigade.)