#payphoneography - the ironic art of photographing public telephones with your mobile phone

Did you know that in 2000, there were about 2.2 million payphones across the United States? Or that there are still about 500,000 operational ones? Or that they handle roughly 1.7 billion calls a year? I didn't know that until about five minutes ago, and neither was I likely to before Dan Marker-Moore dropped me a note about #payphoneography, his ironically inspired project to photograph public telephones with the very device that has contributed to their demise.

#payphoneography started in December 2011, as a personal piece of fun in Dan's corner of California. See a payphone, snap it, share it. Before long, people as far away as Australia had been photographing and sharing images of public telephones using #payphoneography on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Dan says it's been fascinating watching the idea catch on, both spontaneously and as the result of his carefully crafted stickers.

'I made stickers that fit perfectly on the handsets that say #payphoneography. Without any instructions people see the sticker and know how to share. They pull out their mobile phones take a picture and include the hash tag #payphoneography when they share it.'

At the moment over 4,000 images have been contributed to the cause from countries including South Africa, Russia, Italy, and Japan. But Dan says that his favourite phones are from São Paulo: 'Their phones are surrounded by a suspended dome booth and feature bright yellows and blues. Recently these phones were featured in art project where they were transformed into sculptures and paintings.'

And yes, Dan says that a phone has started to ring just after he'd photographed it. He checked very carefully for a lurking Kiefer Sutherland before he answered it, only to be met by the screeching of a fax machine on the other end!

With a 4,000-strong international portfolio, where do you go next? Well, Dan would definitely like to start photographing overseas phones for himself. But he'd like to get the project into print, too.

Want to take part? You know what to do! Want to look at payphones from across the globe? Head the #payphoneography website: blog.payphoneography.com

No more standing still to self-record with Swivl!

Ever wished that your camera could follow you around when you're making a video of yourself, without having to resort to bribing your loved ones or paying off your friends in their own weight in beer? Then you should check out Swivl.

It's an IndieGoGo-funded automated camera mount that will move to record you whilst you prance around your kitchen or boogie in the living room.

There's a base and there's a marker. You attach your camera to the base and the marker to you. Whilst you perform your all-singing, all-dancing recording activity, the base will swivel horizontally and vertically to follow the marker - and therefore you - ensuring that you're always in the picture.

Swivl will work with iPhone 4S and 4s and fourth generation iPod Touches. However, it can't cope with older iPhones or iPod Touches or iPads. Although it isn't Android-enabled at launch, the basic following capability will still work without any software, so provided that your Android phone isn't any thicker than 11mm, it can still follow you around.

Any kind of tripod-mountable pocket-sized video camera or sub-six ounce (170g) point-and-shoot will also attach to the base and let you record yourself in all your mobile glory. If you want to have a go with your dSLR you're out of luck, though.

Swivl's makers, Satarii, are anticipating that the device will ship early next year. If you're interested, you'll need to sign up now and when they're ready to go, you'll be asked to convert your interest into an order. But the bad news is that at the moment, they're only shipping to North America and there isn't any word on how much it'll cost yet, either.

Still, it's so cool when a crowd-funded project comes together!