GLOBAL – Our weekly look at the photos taken by ordinary people every day on Nokia devices takes us to the Nokia E71 this week. And once again, we’ve had a hard job settling on just 10 images from the thousands that have been uploaded to Flickr. The E71’s Qwerty keyboard and productivity-focused features may make it easy to label as a business phone, but as our selection here shows, its 3.2-megapixel camera is the business too, and is responsible for some great shots.
So here’s our final selection – you can click through on each thumbnail to see more from each photographer, we’ve included links to the full size shot on each one’s individual Flickr channel.
.Florianópolis 1
The wide-angle downward shooting perspective gives a slightly off-kilter craziness to this pic that works nicely, and the colours – deep browns, greens and blues – are great natural hues that are highly pleasing on the eye.
Fire Hydrant
The classic one colour on grey trick. Get enough detail and place the subject off centre, and this is an aesthetically pleasing shot every time. The fire hydrant’s vertical lines means this pic wouldn’t work taken horizontally.
.Florianópolis 2
HelenaN
Another shot from Florianopolis. The pathway holds this all together, and while we normally preach placing the subject off-centre, keeping it front and centre here adds an interesting symmetry to the whole picture.
Blick auf die Nordsee
This isn’t necessarily a brilliantly taken shot, but it illustrates the incredible colours nature comes up with. Use these colours on a piece of clothing and you’ve got a disaster. But in nature, the colours always work.
Sail
Sometimes things don’t work out the way you planned. Look closely and you’ll see the sailing boat that inspires this shot’s title. But in the end result, it’s the impressive bridge that’s the star. Great lines and colours.
Nacka nature reserve / Söderbysjön
The setting here is always going to give you “nice” pics, but what makes this one stand out is taking a step back off the water’s edge and framing the scene in the soft colours of the surrounding trees.
Z Cafe
You want the definition of “character”? Look at this great pic. Plenty to entertain the eye, a chaotic mix of lines, colours and shapes, yet the sum total – held together by the painted name on the wall – works together.
North Station
The good old sepia mode never gets old, does it? Empty shots of public spaces at night always make good subjects for the sepia treatment, and they let our photographer get away with the lights being a touch overexposed.
Fan Store
Laplander admits to a bit of post-processing here, but we like this shot anyway. Wonderful composition, and great contrast between the fans blowing right and the arrows pointing left. The grainy olden-day look works too, natural or not.
Window
Photography is as much about breaking rules as obeying them. In nine out of ten situations, this is a poor shot: there’s simply too much noise. But here, because the colours are basically greyscales, the noise adds pleasing textures.