Cool Ways To Use Your Digital Camera Or Camera Phone
1. Get Where You’re Going: When traveling in a new area, snap a photo of the pertinent map on display: the subway routes, the highway map, the mall schematic, the city street map, etc. If you’re traveling by plane, bus, or train, keep a photo of the schedule and your itinerary.
2. Find Your Car: When parking on at Disney World/O’Hare/Sea World/Six Flags/Woodfield Mall (which may soon coalesce, along with the Dan Ryan, into a single parking lot), photograph your car’s location, Section & Row designations, or nearby landmarks and get a photo of the door between the parking area and the destination (e.g., the entry/exit door leading from the airport to the airport parking lot in which you parked). When parking on the street, take a snapshot of the street signs, a landmark, or a nearby street address.
3. Add It To Your Computer Toolkit: Take a picture of the information on the screen when screen capture won’t work (e.g., The Blue Screen Of Death) or just to avoid printing something. When you’re trying out variations on your blog settings, photograph them to remember what worked and what didn’t. When you’re replacing the hard drive, take a picture of the original before disassembling it on Friday, staying drunk the entire weekend, and coming in on Monday to install the replacement.
4. Don’t Just Stand There, Scan Something: Make your own copy of a friend’s recipe by taking a photo of it. Keep copies of your checks, expense reports, rebate filings, etc. the same way.
5. Make A Personal Set Of References: Keep information you need (e.g., tide tables, library references, conversion tables) at hand in photo format.
6. Track Progress: If you are supervising an ongoing project such as building a house, repairing a wrecked car, or coercing the offspring to clean their rooms, especially if you can monitor the task only intermittently, taking photos whenever you visit is a dandy way to keep track of progress and a useful supplement to discussions with those working on the project. Pictures of underlying structures (e.g., the studs, conduits, electrical wiring, water lines, and weight-bearing walls of a house before the drywall goes up) can be invaluable years later when those structures are invisible and memories have addled.
7. Save A Few Hundred Bucks; Make Your Own Electronic Whiteboard: Take a photo of the notes on the whiteboard, blackboard, overhead, etc. Email them to the others from your phone or copy the notes to your hard drive and distribute from there.
8. Find A Car, A Job Or A Place To Live. If you (or your kid or your buddy or … ) are looking for a car, a job, a place to live, etc., keep track of serendipitous finds. Snap pictures of the pertinent “For Sale” & “Help Wanted” signs as well as the sign’s referent.
9. Know When The Store Is Open And Closed: Take pictures of the signs stores post of their hours of business. Keep these in their own folder on your phone so you know if it makes sense to head to Best Buy at 6:30 PM on a Sunday.
10. Make A Wish: Snap a picture of anything you see that you might want to buy – clothes, books, DVDs, cars, and so on. If there is a reference tag (e.g., bar code), include it in the picture. You can check at your convenience for the best price. It’s also a handy way to keep a list of stuff you might want for yourself or you might buy later as a gift.
11. Be a Oenophile, Not A Weenie: If you find a wine you like at a restaurant, take a quick photo of the label so you can order it again at the restaurant or buy it from your favorite wine shop.
12. Prove It. Document damaged goods. Fender benders are an obvious example, but others include photographing packages damaged in transit before opening them and spoiled groceries (rather than storing that putrid flounder).
13. Show, Don’t Tell: A picture of your weird genital rash is a lot more helpful to your doctor than a verbal description and might save an office visit. Similarly, use photos to show the guy at the body shop where those scratches are so he can touch them up, to warn the guy mowing your lawn where you just planted those peonies, and to find out from the exterminator if those bugs are termites or ants.
Updates:
If A Tree Falls, Do The Landscapers Hear That It Happened?
Photo Opp & Orison
scanR.com: Using Your Digital Camera Or Camera Phone As A Scanner
The Answer To That Picture Is - Using Photos To Ask A Question
Gee thanks. Until I read this post, I was perfectly happy with an ordinary phone that didn’t do anything but send and receive calls. I’d made it through without a PDA and an iPod, too, and techno lust was, for once, under control.
Comment by MindSpin — June 4, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
Snap a photo of your sleeping lover’s nude body, lying face down diagonally across across the bed on top of the covers, where he landed after waking up and looking for you when you went out for a run.
Comment by Mrs. Linklater — June 5, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
Or she, depending on your preference.
Comment by Mrs. Linklater — June 5, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
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