All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

These past few days since the Santa Monica photowalk, I’ve been carrying my Canon PowerShot SD600 6MP Digital Elph Camera with me more often. In my pocket.

Yesterday, I was taking random photos of anything and everything. Why?

My co-worker and friend, who we call “Roug,” influenced me because he said:

What one person thinks is just another random picture, another person could think it’s art. (Paraphrased)

He digs this random photo I took:

What’s your photography style? Why? (Send me a pingback or trackback, or leave a link to your input on this.)

If you use Verizon Wireless and their online service, My Account, you can use Backup Assistant for free!

As a My Account member, Back-Up Protection will let you automatically retain a copy of your saved phone numbers to a secure web site, so they’re always available if you lose or upgrade your phone.

I love that it updates everyday at my specified time. When it was time to upgrade my phone, it was painless.

Get it. Use it.

Note: If you have more than one phone number for a contact, it doesn’t retain the default number you use for your contacts. Extremely minor, though.

I’ve upgraded from my LG VX8100 to a slim LG VX8600. It’s been discontinued, but it’s still in stock at Verizon Wireless being phased out. I preferred it compared to the LG VX8700 because the front display isn’t narrow and it’s black. Plus, the area below the keypad is flat, which wasn’t the case with the VX8700.

I received the phone on Friday, so I haven’t had that long to mess with it.

Cool

• It’s thin!
• You can e-mail 30-second MP3s to it and use them as ringtones.
• The delay when taking photos is very short compared to my LG VX8100. Plus, they come out really well - as long as the lighting is good, of course.
• You can read text messages on the front display - sweet!

Lame

• Smudges easily because of its slick surface. It’s ok - you can wipe it just as easily, too.
• You can’t set custom text message alerts for specific contacts. There was no reason for LG to remove this feature.
• The keypad is flat, not raised like other phones. It takes some getting used to.
• Speakerphone isn’t that loud. You’d need to be in a quiet environment to hear it.
• The ringer isn’t very loud, either.
• If you want to keep the external display lit, that’ll mean keeping the internal display lit, too, because they’re sharing the same bulb. You have to press a side button to make sure the phone is still on.
• No 2.5″ headset jack.

Conclusion

I’m overlooking the flaws. I don’t use speakerphone that much and I use a Bluetooth headset. I’ll suppose I’ll get over not being able to see the display without pressing a side button. I’m getting used to the keypad.

This HowardForums post of “LG VX8600 Threads of Interest” helps.

If you’re going to upgrade your phone (and you’re with Verizon Wireless), I think this phone is a safe bet. Be quick, though, they’re almost out!

I had a blast at my first Photowalk! Thanks to Thomas Hawk for posting about it and Trevor Carpenter for organizing the event. On top of that, I brought James Corsini with me - and he doesn’t even own a camera! (He borrowed a Casio P&S camera, so that worked out fine.) He was stoked that he came along. We had a great time hanging out with a lot of awesome and enthusiastic photographers.

• You don’t need a DSLR camera - a P&S will work fine. If you can take photos, you’re good to go.
• If you’re taking photos at night, bring a tripod. I was struggling to get steady photos.
• Don’t be scared! It seemed like most of the guys in the group didn’t even know each other until that evening.

See my photos from the Photowalk at Flickr

P.S. I first heard about the Photowalk through Thomas Hawk at Twitter.

Update: Here’s some links to the other photographers that were there. Thomas Hawk linked to them already, but I’ll do the same for kicks.

• Thomas Hawk (Zooomr)
• Trevor Carpenter (Zooomr)
• Randy Carranza (Zooomr)
• Alexis Carranza (Zooomr)
• Douglas Welch (Zooomr)
• Noel Kleinman (Zooomr, Flickr)
• Mike Hedge (Zooomr, Flickr)
• Leah Peah (Flickr)
• Brian Auer (Flickr)
• Karoli (Zooomr)

Other ways to see the photos: the “photowalking080407″ tag at Zooomr and Flickr.

The more stuff that’s in your inbox, the larger the mental block becomes.

Yesterday, I didn’t completely empty my inbox. So what? If you don’t process your inbox on a regular basis, you won’t know of ticking time bombs.

I did shred a lot of stuff and filed a few things, so that was good.

Tip: A lot of stuff can be filed, shredded or thrown away immediately. If it can skip your inbox, that’ll help immensely.

Tomorrow and Friday, I don’t have to go to the office. My supervisor will be going on vacation start next Tuesday for essentially two weeks. So, it’s imperative that I process everything in there so I know what I need to take care of before he leaves. Once he’s gone, I need to be at the office everyday until he returns. (I work part-time.)

I’m much better at work. With my supervisor’s help, we got rid of a lot of stuff from my office (e.g. old computers, broken monitors, broken printers). My work email account is in tip-top shape.

See that picture? I was there before…it’ll happen again tomorrow. Oh yes.