ArtiphyTheHeart

Frida

Experimental play with photo apps today.  

I'm very picky when it comes to photo apps.  I research the heck out of them, then limit the number I use to a bare minimum.  And there are only a handful that I'd recommend.  

Suffice it to say that I wasn't thrilled when I heard that Rhonna Farrer had added a new one to the glut of photo apps that already exist, but there was so much hype about it that I decided to check it out for myself.  I was prepared to hate it, or at least be bored by it.  But I loved it.  Enough to buy it right away.  

I shot this Frida Kahlo metal sculpture several years ago at an outdoor antique scrap yard.  In less than three minutes this evening using the Rhonna Designs app, I accessed the photo from my camera roll, cropped it, adjusted the saturation, picked two elements and a font, adjusted the size and transparency of the wing element, chose and adjusted the size and color of the pennant element and text block, applied a filter and tweaked it, then sent it to my camera roll, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.  Less than three minutes.  Truth.  

It went this quickly and seamlessly largely because Rhonna has posted a set of clear and easy tutorial videos to her website which you can access by clicking HERE.  Because I was prepared not to like the app, I watched the tutorials before I bought it, ready to dismiss it as just another piece of scrapbooking fluff.  I just wanted to see what it had and didn't have to offer.  I was surprised and wowed.  But not as wowed as I was when I actually used it.  Then I was WOWED!  

Seriously.  For less than $2?  Tons of possibilities on its own, but couple it with other photo apps and the creative power goes through the roof.  

Tattoo

Making the best of rush hour:  More iPhoneography.  This one was shot a few days ago from the passenger window of my car while stuck in traffic.  Shot (but not edited) in camera awesome, edited in repix and instagram.  Totally iPhone.

Going To Extremes

I'm learning that there are large communities of people who shoot and process using only an iDevice.  No post iPhone or iPad edits allowed.  And as I am one of these, I was very happy to discover Life In LoFi, an oasis of information on the web for iPhoneographers.

For both shooting and processing, there are so many photography apps.  Some really good, some awful.  Camera Awesome, Snapseed, and Afterglow are three of my personal favorites.  Great performers with a stunning array of filter choices and processing tools.  But so much choice can be confusing.  How do you choose when there's so much to pick from?

Personally, I let subject and setting make the decision for me.  For me, the fundamental question is, "What are the mood and feeling that the story behind this photo needs to convey?"  Once I've answered that question, processing is easy.  I look to enhance the mood or story, and I stay away from anything, no matter how eye-catching, that strays from the essential feeling I want to convey.

Take some time to look at the photo above.  Stare at it for a minute or two.  It was taken at the onset of a recent freak snow in the desert.  Due to prior overnights of hard freezes, many plants and bushes turned to brambles.  But because the daytime sun peeks through, not everything suffers the freeze, and there's a mixture of dead branches with patches of green grass on the ground below, already dusted with a fine layer of white snow.  There's a foggy haze, but not enough to extinguish the sunlight, as the first flakes begin to fall.  All that sets the mood, and makes it easy to zip past all of the bright, colorful, artistic filters in processing.

The mood of the photo above is quite different.  As you take a minute to look at it, you'll see that essentially, it is hard and fixed.  Stone, metal, slate, and tile, combine with harsh indoor lighting. Nothing moves.  Even the people at the counter seem to be stationary fixtures. The first photo was soft and fluid, and this is it's exact opposite.  

The minute I framed this shot, I thought of Edward Hopper.  And even though it was shot from inside rather than through a window, there is a sense that the people at the coffee bar are being observed.  That the subjects are on the inside and the observer is clearly on the outside looking in, lends a surreal effect to the mood of the photo.  This makes processing decisions easy.  All that's soft and fuzzy is eliminated.  In mood, this photo is the extreme opposite of the one at the top.  It has hard edges, and the story requires that they be extremely defined.

There are so many photographic styles and temperaments, but for me, identifying my pictures by mood and story, bringing forth the essential emotions and displaying them to advantage is what comes naturally.  It's essentially what I do with my other artwork, and it's what defines it.  I never thought of myself as a romanticist, but by centering on story, mood, and emotion, that's exactly what is central to my art.  It makes things easy to define.  One romantic style, two distinctly different moods.

Lucy's

This iPhoneographer is trying to remember to snap pics of the ordinary things.  I've said it before, but I'll tell you again that it's a really difficult habit to acquire when you've spent your life linking photography to portraits, holidays, special occasions, and nothing much else.  

Not that breakfast at Lucy's isn't a special occasion.  We split the absolutely humongous crab and asparagus omelete with fingerling potato and red pepper sauté because it was just too much for one person.  Almost too much for two.  I managed to get a shot of the #54 they put in front of us at the counter, but after the food came, all I could think about was digging in to those Good Eats! 

More Simple Pleasures

From time to time I post about my simple pleasures.  This not-so-simple journal page filled with layers of my stenciled prints contains a list of some of my favorite simple pleasures.  

Tea always heads the list, and the page with it's tie-dye colors reminds me of an old hippie coffee house where good whole leaf teas are stored in air-tight containers and brewed fresh, pot by pot and cup by cup.

Next on the list is birdsong.  I live where the birds spend their winters.  There's nothing more pleasant than waking up in a warm, quiet room with a window cracked open for fresh air, and the first sounds of the day coming from a choir of birds.

Two more of my favorite simple pleasures are tide pools, and just breathing deeply.

This is MYPL page 25.  I've incorporated many stenciled prints using Liquitex acrylic spray paint for Stencilry.  The tea photo is a print of the photograph in yesterday's post which you can see by clicking HERE.

Important Things

Taking breaks are important things.  Like taking a photo break with my tea.  

I'm trying to take more pictures of some of the everyday things in my life, as well as the extraordinary.  I have not formed the habit, so the hard part for me is thinking to do it.   I grew up associating  photos with portraits, events, and tourist attractions.  Occasionally they were necessary for classwork, but I never thought of them as a means of recording the everyday things of my life.

Now I want to change that.  Not for any particular reason.  Not because I want to include my own photos in collage or in journals, although I probably will.  In fact, I'm already working on a journal page using another version of this photo.  But I do want to photograph more things more often, just for their own sake.  I'm a firm believer that "just because" is a valid reason.  And valid reasons are important things.

Thinking to snap a pic is so easy for lots of you.  But it's foreign territory for me.  Perhaps I should design a photograpy passport for myself to wear on a lanyard around my neck.  As permission to enter this foreign territory.  Maybe that will help me remember to frame and snap.  What do you think?