Phoning it in
Billy Baldwin’s at the podium, waxing hopeful about presidential candidate John Kerry. Just a few feet away in the ballroom of Brentwood’s Luxe Hotel, an imposing figure in black snaps a picture of him with his camera phone.
Before Baldwin has even finished his speech, his mug is posted to an online Kerry gallery on Buzznet.com, the Los Angeles based website that provides amateur photographers -- mainly using camera phones -- a forum and community.
In this case, the not-so-stealth photographer, Marc Brown, is one of Buzznet’s two founders. Along with partner Anthony Batt, he launched the service last October as the camera phone trend was heating up.
So far, the site has 10,000 registered users -- and has been growing at a rate of 50% to 100% per month, according to Brown. Buzznet and other sites like it have tapped into the phenomenon of moblogging (short for mobile phone web logging), in which cellphone technology has fully collided with blog culture.
Like their text-based predecessors, which encourage anyone to publish their most profound or mundane thoughts on the Internet, moblogs seem to have no bounds. By the end of this year, business experts project that the global camera-phone market will have doubled. And while some use digital cameras, photo phone users can publish their worldviews -- visually, not verbally -- without so much as a laptop.
The moblog faithful come from all locations and walks of life, and they use Buzznet as much as a chat room as blog host.
“In the photo blogging universe, trading pictures is now almost as important as taking pictures,” says Adam Fisher, a senior editor at Wired magazine. “It’s a very different culture from regular blogging, where posting is paramount.”
Though users can create personal galleries, many post photos on a particular subject -- as Brown did with his Baldwin picture -- or in a city gallery. And it’s these public rooms where images spur comment and sometimes debate.
Dawn Aveline, an administrative assistant in Los Angeles, recently posted an image of a janitor’s cart adorned with a “War Is Not the Answer” bumper sticker. “I want to be a janitor,” was the response from a user dubbed Melbo.
“You get an idea of who people are from what they’re editing out of their world,” says Aveline, who has a knack for capturing the aesthetic quality of a simple object, like a doughnut. “Camera phone images have a mystical quality to them. It’s like being in a dream world.”
To Brown, the emerging camera phone culture has the ability to shed new light on events, such as political rallies, parties and music concerts. He got the idea to launch the site while trying to find a place to post photos he took at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio. Buzznet had, several years prior, been Brown’s and Batt’s online youth culture magazine, which folded. Brown saw this as an opportunity to relaunch it in the new spirit of the times.
A strong link to Brown’s beloved music scene remains. Buzznet has a featured artist section that spotlights that person’s camera phone perspective. Recently, singer Rachael Yamagata posted images she took while on the road on her U.S. tour.
A Los Angeles-based medical student and Buzznet user who goes by the screen name NeenerMD has an unusual gallery devoted to overly ample breasts -- which provokes comments on what’s natural and what’s enhanced. Buzznet does not patrol its galleries, though members can report obscene content. This particular gallery has thrived.
The right to roam freely without being secretly photographed has been a big source of controversy when there’s talk of moblogging. When the shutter sound on a phone is muted, it is very difficult for people to tell that they are being photographed.
“Everyone becomes a member of the paparazzi,” says an unapologetic Brown, who once shot and posted an image of Janet Jackson and Jermaine Dupree together before any announcement of their romance. “I didn’t send it to the Enquirer. I just posted it on the website,” he says.
But Buzznet is not just about playing paparazzi. There is also an ethos of the everyday that gives it mass appeal, and for every celebrity shot there are countless baby photos of ordinary folk. “There’s only so many photos of babies that people really want to look at,” Brown says. He equipped the site with private galleries, viewable only by proud grandparents, for instance, to spare the rest of us.
Buzznet is not alone in providing this type of platform. New sites like San Diego-based Text- america.com and Vancouver-based Flickr.com are sprouting up to accommodate prodigious growth in creative cellphone use. But with the technology getting better and cheaper, it seems there’s plenty of room for more moblogging forums. And just as their word-based counterparts have gained respectability, moblogs are creating their own celebrities and their own art. This summer, SixSpace gallery in downtown Los Angeles has planned an exhibition called “SENT,” which claims to be the first such “photocam” show.
And as much as this new pervasive voyeurism may irk some celebrities, others have decided to join the community themselves.
Aveline, for instance, spotted actress Gillian Anderson at Sushi Roku in Los Angeles. It turned out they had the same camera phone and compared notes on their shared pastime. Perhaps camera phones can soon replace lap dogs in their ability to bring strangers together.
*
Camera Phone Culture on the Web
Photo blog community: www.buzznet.com
Camera phone and moblog community: www.textamerica.com
Live chat and media-sharing network: www.flickr.com
Wireless news and photo blogs: www.blueherenow.com
Upcoming camera phone art show: www.sixspace.com/gallery/sent/ index.html
