My Mother is an Xperia and Dad a Samsung

My lovely Nikon D5200 gives me, someone not gifted with an artistic hand, the chance to create a beautiful picture. It's the very devil to get it right, and the rare successes are usually unplanned accidents but I feel like van Gogh as I fiddle with settings and seek the best angle to photograph something that caught my eye.  The disappointment when viewing the end results is often very deep but ups the determination to find out why and to get it right next time. Taking pictures with my mobile phone, on the other hand, is convenient (especially for insurance claims) but feels rather lame.

I'm in the minority, I fear, as a picture paints a 1000 words and this cartoon speaks millenniums to me.

That device in your hand which you refer to as a phone is used for almost anything but speaking on.  Sure, it's a reasonable evolutionary leap from phone to messaging to internet access, email and social media (all forms of communication) but our faithful telephone has now crossed a species boundary and become camera of choice to billions.

Nikon, Leica and Olympus must be feeling the pinch, because I'm not sure they can fall back on a broader range of products to make up the lost turnover like some of the competition can.

For on-tap convenience and availability the mobile phone as a camera has absolutely no equal.  Not only is it pretty much always at hand but with a few swipes the image is instantaneously shared widely.  This, of course, is a double edged sword.  Who hasn't pushed 'send' too hastily and winged an inappropriate email or message they'd rather not have sent?  And now we have the added facility of capturing and sending pictures that really shouldn't have been caught at all, and those photographs, once seen, are indelibly etched on spooked minds. 

Would those naughty photographs of various dangly bits have been taken if the erstwhile photographer had to set up a tripod of sorts and set the timer on his Canon Sureshot?  More importantly, wouldn't the world be better off without those photographic gems?  How do you feel about countless photographs on social media of (usually) young women stretching their pouty lips into hideous duck impressions - and what is it about fitting rooms that has women photographing their reflection and sharing it with their world? Again, if they had to haul out their Nikon D3200, would they bother?

Ready availability and ridiculous ease has created a scenario where we've all become photography addicts, with very little interest in learning more about this fascinating and wonderful field.  Point, shoot, load onto Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp and move on.  Composition?  Light? Capturing the everyday in a creative way?  What's that?  My lunch is on Facebook and that's all that counts.  Photography is easy, anyone can do it.

Ja, well, no fine (love that South African expression).  

So if your child draws your likeness as a Sony Xperia, and your furbaby pauses to pose in his version of cute mode when he sees your phone, you should take a moment yourself and step out from behind your teeny camera.  Put it down for a bit and have some real Face Time creating moments that are captured solely in your mind's eye and that of your companion.  

That's a picture uniquely and forever yours and theirs.