In addition to my Napkin Dad persona I am also the owner of MAKE Studio, photography with an emphasis on personal portraits.  In that capacity I spoke last week at the Social Media Tulsa conference on ‘The Compelling Image in the Age of Social Media’.

Frontispiece of Presentation

One of the points I made is having ‘just’ a cell phone does NOT mean you can’t take a good head shot.  I took these photos of Jami Henson, who attended my session at the conference, right outside the main ballroom. It took a total of about 10 minutes to get 20-30 shots using the two cameras. 

Now you might be able to discern the difference between the two images at the large size, but the truth is most social media uses, especially head shots are going to be much smaller. They are used as icons, profile pics and in other reduced size situations. 

My point is not whether the DSLR photo is better, of course it is. But it is so much better in social media digital circumstances that you shouldn’t get the best out of what you have available?  Can you put up something other than a grainy, ugly, badly lit photo of yourself at a party? Yes, you can. And you can do it with a cell phone if you need to.

If you are interested in experiencing the entire hands-on presentation/workshop for your company or group, please feel free to contact me.

Update 3/25/13: 

So, ready to find out the answer?  The top photograph was taken with my iPhone, the bottom with my Panasonic G1 camera.  I did the same minimal manipulation on both.  The iPhone image I converted to sepia and slightly adjusted the brightness and contrast using the Photoshop Express App in the phone. It took about 2 minutes to take, process and post.  The G1 image I did the exact same thing, but did it on my Mac Pro desktop after downloading from my camera.  

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© 2013 All rights reserved – Marty Coleman | MAKE Studio www.martycoleman.com