Miami Layers: original images

The original images were taken in Miami last December while my lovely bride, Carrie (see #4) and I visited Art Basel & all the related Miami Art Week festivities (OK, maybe not all of them). Some friends were involved with a group of Artists/Designers who were exhibiting at a showroom in the Design district. The images above were taken of an installation piece that consisted of many large sheets of translucent white fabric. The layers were all hung parallel to each other and had large elliptical holes cut in the interior. The holes were cut so that the interior space formed a large egg-shaped void, or room. Inside the "room" was a white platform and people were encouraged to step through the layers to view the piece from inside. On either end of the installation (on the exterior of the piece) were lights that caused the layers of fabric to "glow" on the inside.

Once inside, I whipped out my trusty iPhone 3Gs and proceeded to take lots of pictures, including several sequences of shots for future AutoStitching. Below are a few of the images that resulted from apping these images. Most were put through several applications including (but, not limited to) AutoStitch, Diptic, Iris, Photo fx Ultra, Tiny Planets, Decim8, Juxtaposer, Blender and ReTouch. A couple also had a little ScratchCam action thrown if for good measure, and one had some TwistCam and Segmentix work done.

Miami Layers--> The Resulting Images

The 1st 9 images came out of the initial project, while the last 3 (bottom row) were done recently as a follow-up "revisit" to the work done previously.

All the finished images can be seen on my Portfolio Page right here at Clarkeography.com. You can also see them on my iPhoneArt.com page as well as my Flickr page.

One of my recent series of images started with the one I call "Dune". It all started when I was waiting for my wife to finish "doing some business" after we dropped off our rental car at the Ft. Lauderdale airport recently. I was waiting with our luggage standing next to a wall that was not your typical wall. The odd thing was, that I didn't notice the wall right away. After about 5 minutes, I turned and, it hit me! This was a wall that could definitely have potential. So, as any self-respecting iPhoneographer would do, I whipped out my phone and snapped a few images. The original that I picked is the one shown on top above.

Image #1:  "Dune"
I started by taking 2 slightly different shots of the wall and running them through AutoStitch (a similar effect could have been done in Blender as in image #2). This gave me an image with a slight double exposure look because the 2 images didn't quite line up. I then rotated it 90°, tweaked it a bit in BlurFX, and ran it through the "dual-gradient" filter in Photo fx Ultra. After playing around with a bunch of other ideas, I decided that this one (#1 above) was pretty nice all by itself.

Image #2: "Red Vortex"
This was done by taking image #1 and running it through Tiny Planets. It was then "blended" in Blender by using 2 of the same images, but enlarging and twisting the top image a few degrees prior to doing a basic 50% normal blend. Color was adjusted via Photo fx Ultra.

Image #3: "When Dunes Collide"
This was simply done by taking image #1 and dropping it into Diptic (twice). The resulting 2 images were flipped & adjusted to get the image you see above. I thought about blending an image of a face with this one, but wasn't satisfied with any attempts, so I bagged that idea (for the time being).

Image #4: "What do you see when you look into my Eyes"
This one was also done in Diptic by repeating the image from #3 4-times. This one came out with an even more prevalent "suggestion" of a face, so I went back to the idea of blending an actual face below the abstraction. I found an image of yours truely at the age of about 5, blew it up (using Blender) until the eyes matched the right spots, and the result is #4 above.

A while ago, I created a Facebook post about a shot I took at the local WalMart, so I thought since I now have an official blog, I'd repost it here.

I thought it would be enlightening to retrace my steps on the progression of images that came out of one particulary interesting shot, so I compiled a Diptic shot that encompasses the main tangents from the original shot.

Image #1 - The initial shot was of some empty outdoor shelving at the local Wal-Mart. The image shown was Autostiched from several original Camera+ shots. It was also run through a couple of Iris filters, like color sketch and Retro.

Image #2 - This is a Tiny Planet version that was "fixed" by taking a section from the "tiny tube" version to fill in a blank area in the "tiny planet" version. This was done via Juxtapoaser. Seen in the full-sized version, this shot is pretty nice by itself.

Images #'s 3, 4 and 5 - These are largely Decim8 versions of #2, although, I usually add components from other shots (usually via Superimpose) to fill in dead areas.

Image #6 - This is a Diptic compilation of shots #4, and 5 which was then blended (with Blender) with an old high school picture of yours truely.

Image #7 - This is a Decim8 shot that I thought had potential by itself. I wound up cropping the bottom section off about a third of the way up. I then created a white rectangle in ArtStudio, which I then brought into Photo fx Ultra to apply a gray gradient from the top to midway down. This was then positioned over the bottom section of the main shot via Superimpose (with some transparency applied) to give it more of a reflective look. This shot also has merit on it's own (in my humble opinion).

Image #8 - Here we have shot #7 along with some ballerinas I "borrowed" by taking a Hipstamatic shot of the cover of the latest J. Crew catalogue (I'd give credit to the photographer, but it isn't listed anywhere in the catalogue). A "stamp" was created in Juxtaposer from the cut-out of the ballerinas and used to create a line of dancers long enough to span the image (alas, these are not all twins). Some basic shadows were added in PhotoForge1. The final treatment was with ScratchCam, and I also cropped the bottom a bit more.

Clarke versus Cline...

After the Great Clint Cline spoofed the Grand Exalted Leader of PIXELS about his "no Big Border" decree (and I, of course, couldn't resist jumping into the fray - see my earlier blog entry on this), Clint came out with an image titled: "Precipice" (image #1). Other than the fact that this is another fine example of Mr. Cline's creativity, what caught my eye was a comment he made about this image on iPhoneArt.com. He made what I thought (at the time) was an outrageous claim that this image was created using the iPhone application Tiny Planets. He, of course, explained exactly how it was done (in Tiny Planets), and I was left with mud on my face.

Not one to sit still for this sort of embarrassment, I immediately set out to create a similar effect using Tiny Planets. Naturally, I had immediate success (due, of course, to Mr. Cline's excellent instructions). My 1st thought was to create an image using this new-found technique. But, what to do? Wouldn't it be rather obvious that this new work would be easily spotted as a "derivative" work? I could simply justify it by following Pablo Picasso's line about "Good Artists copy; Great Artists steal". However, I decided to take the high road and give credit where credit was due. The result was image #2, which I titled: "What Clint Might Do (if only he knew how to do a dotted line arrow)...".

Clint, being Clint, took up the challenge. He came out with image #3, which is officially titled: "Tightrope", but is unofficially titled: "What James Might Do (if only he knew how to shade his cubes)".

When this image was posted on Facebook, my response was that it was a good effort, but it could benefit by having a shark added somewhere. Clint responded that he'd get on it, but had to watch his alma mater (the Air Force Academy) play football first. While he was doing that, I came out with image #4, which I titled: "What James might do if he were trying to do what Clint might do if he was trying to do what James might do".

After the ball game, Clint came out with image #5, entitled: "Surf's Up" (unofficially called: "What Clint might do if he were surfing with James...").

I wasn't quite ready to let this go, so I responded by challenging Mr. Cline to get busy & add some shadows to his images somewhere, somehow. In the mean time, I came out with image #6 called: "What James might have done had he come up with those cute little clip-art guys before Clint did...".

Taking up the "shadow challenge", Clint responded with image #7, which he calls: "Shadowcam at 30 meters...".

Not being one to let anyone have "the last word", I responded with image #8, called "Shadowcam in 3 dimensions...".

I think this will most likely be the end of this little "challenge", but Clint and I both agree that we both had some fun & it was great to be "pushed" a bit by a fellow Artist. I hope you enjoyed the progression of images we created as much as we enjoyed creating them!

If Mondrian had an iPad #2

One never knows where that next "idea" will come from...

My earlier attempt to come up with an image that was mostly "black border" has led me in an unexpected direction.

While coming up with “No Wimpy Border Control Guppies Around These Borders” (see previous post), I used a drawing/painting app called ArtStudio. I had rediscovered this app recently in an attempt to create an arrow using a dotted-line pattern. ArtStudio, along with Decim8 led me to the basic image I needed. I might also point out, that these images are created entirely from iOS generated imagery (no photographic images).

I liked the basic minimal simplicity of where this was going, so as any good Artist would do, I went with it! The result is my "If Mondrian had an iPad" series, of which I present #1, and #2 here.

These images also mark the 100th, and 101st of my images to be published on pixelsatanexhibition, THE premier curated iPhoneography site on the web. A BIG thanks to Knox Bronson for encouraging (and, exhibiting) my new work in this extraordinary new Art Form!

I must admit, that back in my early days of iPhoneography (May 11th, 2011 was my 1st published image), I fell prey to the idea that images needed a "frame". So, after Knox "suggested" that I lose the frames on a couple of my earlier images, I did "see the light". I do agree with the idea that the addition of a big border to the image is unnecessary, and detracts from the image. The idea here, is that if you like the image, you should buy a copy and put your own frame on it!

Anyhoo, after the most recent "request" by Mr. Bronson to "bag the borders", one notable member of the iPhoneography community decided to have a bit of fun with it. Clint Cline came out with an image that was, shall we say...., a spoof on the "no border" proclamation. His image (below), entitled "Border Control" was more, or less... all border. I must say, that it did have a fish in it, but as per usual, it was/is a great example of iPhone Mastery by one of the best out there!

"Border Control" by Clint Cline*

So..., this leads me to the idea that I was a bit jealous that I didn't think to do this 1st! Not to be deterred, and responding to the fact that even though Clint's image was mostly border, it was not a black border (per Knox's proclamation). I, therefore, took it upon myself to create an image that is mostly "black". My image presented at the top of the page is the result - "No Wimpy Border Control Guppies Around These Borders" (per Clint's suggestion, I added a "fish" because he said "it worked for me").