The year in hastily snapped cameraphone pictures

I’ve been carrying a cell phone with a camera on it since…I believe 2003.

They tell me the cameras have been getting better, but I’ve seen no real proof of it. I spent most of 2009 still carrying my Blackberry Pearl — the first Blackberry to sport a camera. The picture quality was somewhere just below the plastic kid’s Polaroid I had when I was eight years old.

But a cameraphone isn’t about sharp pictures. It’s about the fact that, though digital cameras have gotten so small you could carry one around in your pocket all the time, not enough of us do. But camera or no we are confronted almost daily with things so surreal as to require documentation. That’s when you reach for that filthy-lensed little treasure still warm from your pocket, covered in lint and old chewing gum wrappers. That’s when you remember why you gave a damn about having one.

Here are some of the shots I took with mine over the last year. The Blackberry has been de-commissioned, replaced by Motorola CLIQ. But I’ll always remember the good times.