As you can see from all the cellphone pictures I took in 2005, the limitations were originally technological; my cell’s camera just took crappy photos.  But if you look at all the cellphone pictures I took in 2006, you can see that the quality’s actually pretty decent.  I’m not doing much creative with the camera, though; just taking snapshots.  (Of course, some of the snapshots came out OK.  And in case anybody’s wondering:  (1) that is NOT real blood; I used to be the captain of a kickball team called Trauma Center.  (2)  Yes, that’s White Whale’s VP running a marathon.  (3) Like the rest of the world, pretty much all I took pictures of were dogs, babies, and my friends.)

Lately, though, I’m finding that I use my new phone in a more active way: to snap quick shots of things that seem like they might be relevant to Web designs I’m working on.  At last January’s SEED conference, I listened to Carlos Segura talk in an incredibly inspiring way about finding design inspiration from the everyday world; he apparently carries his camera everywhere, and he showed some really hilarious and amazing photographs.

I’m not the sort of person who carries a camera everywhere I go (unlike Donald); but I do have this cell phone, and lately I’ve been learning to whip it out when nature inspiration calls. We’re currently working on a design for the Lewis & Clark Web site.  LC’s natural environment is so unbelievably stunning that we’ve got to convey it on their site, ideally in a beautiful, non-cliched way.  (We’re not there yet as of today, June 1— but by the time you read this, we’ll probably have it figured out.)  Walking the dog the other day, I just began to notice how much natural beauty I was surrounded by even on my residential Oakland streets. The cell phone came in handy:

I doubt any of that will make it into the site design, but at a time when I felt like I needed to gather some inspiration from natural forms, my little VX8350 came in handy.