Checking in at Heathrow Terminal 5 is that bit more interesting at the moment thanks to a photo installation by Henry Reichold. Just don’t be too fooled by its splendour.

Glorious Gadget

A few years back, I started traveling with a Nokia N95 as my companion. Ostensibly a mobile phone, it was also oh so much more: a PDA; a five megapixal digital camera; a video camera capable of taking over an hour of footage. This once glorious gadget effectively slammed shut a Pandora’s Box of packing issues. Suddenly a trouser pocket, not a three-segment shoulder bag, was enough to hold my artistic pretensions and memory making intentions. The N95 and I were good friends.

We still are, but Nokia – and camera phones in general – have moved on. And on. Today, the megapixels and megabytes offered by these everyday accessories push ever higher, casting my N95 into obsolescence. I cling to it with the zeal of a 21st century Luddite, adamant that, like Super 8 and Polaroid, this is an invention good enough to make a fashionably retro return in ten years time. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest my obstinacy is foolish.

A Tale of Two Cities

The N86, Nokia’s newest camera phone, promises photographs taken to the rate of 8 megapixels. It’s the focus – or at least, it provides the focus – for a new exhibition by photographer Henry Reicholds, who travelled to eight cities around the globe in order to test out the camera’s capabilities.

A slice of the exhibition is currently gracing Heathrow’s (otherwise entirely graceless) Terminal 5. Next to the check-in counters, a pair of floor-level undulating hoardings, each the size of a London bus, display photos from two of the cities on Reichold’s trip: Mumbai and Dubai.

Prudence teaches, these cities have been chosen for reasons, other than that they rhyme. Reichold’s shots of Dubai are massive and magnificent; composed panoramas of skyscraping architecture seemingly devoid of human presence. The Mumbai photos, on the contrary, are ad-hoc snapshots of slum-dwelling Mumbai-ites. Here, human vigour and colour rules the frame.

Artistic Pretensions

In other words, the photos of these two cities show that the N86 serves both artistic pretensions and memory making intentions. Reichold’s Dubai shots suggest the camera deals well with long shots and is able to pick up on subtleties of lighting that were invisible to previous incarnations of the camera phone. Likewise, his vividly colourful Mumbai shots imply the camera is a great close-range tool.

It’s an excellent means of spicing up the check-in routine at Terminal 5, though a sliver of trickery at the heart of the installation does undermine its consumer-review credentials. Reichold’s panoramas are in fact mosaics of photos ‘stitched-together’ using software that’s probably too advanced for most users, while his colours suggest the accentuating hand of Photoshop. The photos are great – don’t get me wrong – just don’t be fooled into thinking yours will necessarily look the same.

Fun of a Camera Phone

But then, half the fun of camera phones is that their photos are just off perfect. And besides, what you lose in quality, you make up for in dexterity. Not only do these phones require little to no packing space, they also prove an excellent tool when shooting on the streets. As the unblinking faces of Reichold’s Mumbai photos testify, few people give a hoot when you wave a mobile phone in front of their face. As I’ve found with my beloved N95, holiday snaps become that much more real as a result.

Inspired? Check out Travel Intelligence’s listings for luxury hotels in London.

(When JB Cooper isn’t lending the TI Blog his wisdom on the advancement of camera phones, he can also be found musing on film at JBCooper.com, penning top-notch pieces on seeking out four of the most stylish St. Patrick’s Day hotels around the world or reviewing chic design hotels like the Luxx in Bangkok for Travel Intelligence…)

Technorati Tags: camera phone, Henry Reichold, london heathrow terminal 5, london heathrow terminal five, Luxury Hotels, luxury hotels London, mobile phone, Nokia N86, photo installation, terminal 5, terminal five

Tags: camera phone, Henry Reichold, london heathrow terminal 5, london heathrow terminal five, Luxury Hotels, luxury hotels London, mobile phone, Nokia N86, photo installation, terminal 5, terminal five

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 2:42 pm and is filed under TI Tips, Travel News & Views, Travel Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.