Nomadic Cam

A miniature camera has been launched into the Israeli reality. It’ll rove here and there, change hands again and again, and document its journey painstakingly. You can come along, too.

I'll make it quick. About two years ago I was walking around in the street with a friend, Ofer Shani when I noticed his dwarfish Sony T7 camera for the first time. Ofer showered it with compliments and I was captivated by its charm, too. Today it isn’t new anymore; it has “only” 5.1 megapixels and an 3x optical zoom. But it’s the very best of its genre. Its screen and its Zeiss lens are stunning.

I continued to use it and some of the photos were published in magazines and all kinds of places, like here, and lots here. I found out that the shops had run out of T7s, leaving many admirers and lots of broken hearts behind. My heart, too. Some time ago, when I was told that a certain shop had one last T7 left, I rushed out and bought it.

That’s right. Ever since, it’s been sitting with me in its box. Why the heck do I need two of them? I really don’t. So what do you say? What should I do with it? I have to tell you, too, that it’s brand new and hasn’t been opened (it’s worth NIS 2,000). For professionals, you may look here for more for details.

So? Wouldn’t you like an incredible camera like this for a gift? Come close for a moment, and listen quitely…

This Friday I’m going to hand the camera to my friend Y. That’s where the T7’s unusual journey will begin. Y, who’ll be the camera’s new custodian, is an amateur photographer among other things. On Sunday he’ll take his own picture with the camera, along with a clip from that day’s newspaper. He’ll upload the picture to Flickr. It doesn’t matter where, provided that he does one thing: upload all images under one tag: “katze-blog”. That way, anyone who wants to see the pictures can key “katze-blog” in Flickr’s search engine and join the photo journey. That’s all.

Photo journey? Exactly so. Y isn’t going to keep that amazing camera. Instead, he’ll hand it on with the box (and this text) to a certain friend. Now the story starts over. Whoever gets the camera can keep it for a week. On Friday they have to pass it on. But before they do that, they’ll upload to Flickr (katze-blog) at least one picture of themselves with a newspaper and a date, and several others – all of them taken by this little naughty camera. They should not forget, of course, to put them under the appropriate tag so that we can all see it.

And on Friday they’ll hand this little treasure to a new user. 

                                                          Little Camship touring the solar system..

Imagine the gallery of photos that we will get. My dream is that the nomadic camera’s journey will last for months if not years, crossing borders and wandering in foreign lands. Like a little spaceship that tours the solar system, the T7 will document the places that it visits and commemorate the people who keep it moving on each time. So far, we—the human photographers—have been used to changing cameras. In this case, the camera changes photographers.

Yes, it’s easy to break the chain; everyone may be tempted to keep the camera for themselves. But it’ll be easy to identify them, and then we’ll contact them and ask them why. But you won’t do that to us, after all.

Bon voyage!

                                                       ————–

NomadiCam pictures here: 

Flickr gallery – katze-blog  Nomadic cam – Flickr group, flickriver

Links: Jeff Pulver blog, Alex blog

A special thank-you to my friends:
Guy Vardi, CCO (Chief Camera Officer), who helps in developing the idea.
Yaniv Golan, CLO (Chief Logistics Officer).

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