Recently, I mentioned trying my hand at photographs again, using the camera in my phone. I've been doing it for over a year now but all I usually do is store them on my pc. I don't post many of them.

Maybe that will change.

I think some of my photos have something to say.

On a wet afternoon last weekend where the orange and yellow leaves stood out against the layers of slowly boiling smoke clouds, I came across Grace sleeping on my bed. These are some of the photos I took as a result.

The first pic is the original shot.

I like the phone-camera; it takes a naturally hazy shot and it cannot be expanded beyond a small computer screen without disintegrating into formless, muddy pixils.

I like that about the camera - its cheapness, its low-tech qualities.

With some cheap graphics program (courtesy of BIPC), I can do some altering: I can manually color, crop and adjust the contrast. I boosted the contrast on the second shot.

I like them both.

The sleeping princess awakes.

Grace is getting old. When she woke to the sound of creaking floorboards, she thumped her tail once against the bed. She didn't move; she just settled back as I moved around, watching as I clicked a few pics, the camera emitting a noisy electronic-shutter sound. This is another original pic.

There is white under her chin and on her belly. For this photo, I cropped it and boosted the contrast.

This set seems to be less successful because there is more pixilating going on. But maybe it's OK because the mood and the somewhat the personality of my dog is captured.

Yeah...

I also cropped the final shot. I changed the color settings to give it an old-fashioned sepia, low-contrast tone.

I'm not much into photos about people. My photos are personal and I think these photos in particular show a sense of calm, like I was feeling that afternoon.

Maybe they're awful and strangers will tell me that because strangers looking at a blog can.

But I can also post them because I am a stranger and that's another thing I like about this blog.