Day 362 of 365

Napping with a new friend

Spent the day shopping -- picking up various accessories for Christmas gifts we received, spending gift cards, getting a new cell phone. Ah yes, new phone. I was due for an upgrade and my current phone has a black eye. Well, now it's my previous phone. So by this time, I figured I'd go for the smartphone upgrade. I work for a web company, so having that mobile access does help me with my job. There's no way I'd go to an iPhone, because AT&T's coverage in New York City is horrendous (and their 3G network is not as good as Verizon's; notice that Luke Wilson never mentions "3G" when he's tossing postcards over the map), so I decided to give the Droid a whirl. So far, so good -- after 21 hours.

And so that brings to five the total number of cameras I've used to take pictures this year. There's my Konica-Minolta DSLR, my Canon Powershot used for most pics, my wife's point-and-shoot, my old Samsung and now the new Droid.

Day 311 of 365

8th Ave. on a Saturday

This hefty bulldog was awaiting his owner outside a takeout restaurant.

Day 217 of 365

Always getting into somewhere

Lenny under the cardboard sofa Casey made for him. I realized after midnight that the only photo I took all day was this cameraphone shot.

"Empire on a wet night," Manhattan, September 2008

Empire on a wet night

I don't take too many cameraphone shots anymore now that I have a useful, compact point-and-shoot for everyday images. But this one was my phone's screensaver for about half a year after I took it.

"I drink to your health," Boulder, Colorado, May 2006

"I drink to your health," Boulder, Colorado, May 2006
I drink to your health when I'm with you,
I drink to your health when I'm alone,
I drik to your health so often,
I'm starting to worry about my own!
-- A traditional Irish toast

Or, at least one I got from a greeting card. Taken with a camera phone at the Catacombs bar in Boulder. No idea anymore what the heck I was drinking that night, but it was good.

Vanity Plate No. 1 / NJ - REDWINE

There were a lot of portraits -- self and otherwise -- used to depict vanity, natch, not to mention people gussying themselves up, applying makeup or otherwise admiring their own reflections. Frankly, I didn't expect to see so many photos of birds -- particularly waterfowl like swans, ducks and geese -- used as an expression of narcissism. Peacocks I understood and the dozen cats weren't a surprise, either. I also don't quite get the idea of mannequins having "excessive pride in one's appearance." Talk about anthropomorphizing something. I did, however, enjoy those who used one of the definitions further down the list.

So while I spent the day going through the 263 entries before I could come home to post my own, I started to wonder if I had any photos on my computer that would fit the challenge. (A hard-drive crash a few months ago took a chunk out of my available images and I haven't been able to rebuild the library yet.) And then I realized that I did, even if it was a camera-phone image. While there were a few posts of cars -- usually exotic ones or high-horsepowered ones -- it took me 154 posts before I found someone of like mind.

This is one of a few vanity plate photos I have. As the collection grows, I'll come up with a better way to present the low-quality, grainy photos produced by a camera phone (since that's how I tend to capture these things when I'm out doing errands at Target, which is where REDWINE was spotted). For now, though, this.