Guerrilla Camera Phone #1

For roughly the last 10 years I’ve had jobs that take me all over Colorado’s front range. First it was electrical and now for the last 7 of those years it’s been IT work that’s put me anywhere from Pueblo to Cheyenne on a given day. And I’ve never failed to notice the uniqueness of the situation as I spend a lot of time driving, which I really enjoy, and being in different places that bring a constant influx of characters normal and not. On a good day it can be cathartic because the solitude and randomness allows me to come up with all kinds of ideas for stuff I like – music, writing, photography. The latter being particularly beneficial since the invention of the camera phone.

So since I’ve had a camera phone, I’ve been taking pictures of things that I think are, well, picture worthy in some way. Artistic, funny, ironic, evocative, or just plain cool looking. Even though most of the camera phones I’ve had tend, not surprisingly, to have shitty resolution and contrast quality – although they’re getting better – the inherent shittiness of the image can make for an added ‘guerrilla’ effect – like the photographer taking something on the move in an unorthodox fashion, a something that requires clandestine tactics. To hide my guerrilla picture taking, I’ve made fake coughs to disguise the shutter sound that comes from the phone, I’ve made it look like I’m texting, I’ve pretended my eyes are bad and held the phone at weird angles to make it look like I’m trying to read a message on the screen, and all while I’m ‘taking’ a picture of something that needed the action of ‘taking’ to be disguised. Of course, not all pictures need to be concealed, but the few that do require guerrilla strategies can be pretty fun and challenging to pull off.

A woman reading on a bus.

Some unusual graffiti under a bridge.

I think it was a modern day brothel - I guess they need internet and phones too! This place was creepy. I showed up and asked for the contact person and the lady that answered the door let me come in but locked me in this room while she went looking for the manager. You can see the daylight coming in through the metal door. Very weird.