I am proud to announce the formation of The international iPhoneography Group (TiiG) and that the group's inaugural iPhoneography exhibition will be held at the prestigious Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC) in Denver. The Show's opening reception will be Friday, May 3rd and a closing reception will be held on June 14th, 2013. The CPAC is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013. It is an honor to have this important organization embrace and host an iPhoneography exhibition.
Opening Reception: Friday, May 3rd, 6-9 pm
(co-opening with the annual CPAC Member’s Show)
Closing Reception: June 14th, 6-9pm.
Show Dates: May 3rd – June 14th.
Workshops, Panel Discussion and Presentations by TiiG members (to be announced) will be held on Saturday, May 4th. Subjects tentatively to include: Past, Present, and Future of iPhoneography; Hipstamatic tips & tricks; What apps are best & how to get started.
Participating Artists: James Clarke - Boulder, CO; Clint Cline – Plant City, FL; Shirley Drevich – Miami, FL;
Roger Guetta – Montreal, Quebec; Cindy Patrick – Moorestown, NJ; Rudy Vogel – Springfield, MA.
This will be the inaugural Exhibition for The international iPhoneography Group. Established in 2012, The International iPhoneography Group, or TiiG, is a collective of digital artists dedicated to the creation, education and promotion of Fine Art using iOS technologies as their "palette" of choice.
TiiG was founded to demonstrate the vast possibilities of utilizing application-based technologies to enhance and transform photographic works. The imagery created by the members of this collective is photographic at its core, but pushes the boundaries of creativity and moves beyond the camera. Photography may play a part in what iPhoneography is, but by no means is it the defining point of what it has become.
The goal of TiiG is to move iPhoneography into the realm of Fine Art, free of the prejudices that surround the utilization of these advanced technologies.
The 6 Artists who make up the founding members of TiiG were chosen for their dedication to the advancement, education, and promotion of Mobile Phone technologies that take photography beyond capturing images with a camera. The images presented also differ from current digital Art in that no computers, or standard computer based software such as Photoshop, was used in their creation. The images exhibited are all created on iOS devices (iPhone, or iPad) with applications currently available.
James Clarke:
“Taking pictures with a mobile device is more about collecting raw material. I’m not interested in taking amazing pictures just to replicate what we already see. You could say that my goal is to create imagery that has an emotional response. My interest is more in the area of creating digital Art. I enjoy the set of tools I’ve been handed by a guy who had the vision to make technology simple and fun to use. It gives you a sense of freedom that you don’t get somehow sitting at your computer.”
Clint Cline:
“Digital photography has spawned a tremendous democratization of visual expression and - despite the claptrap that inevitably arises - we are all better for it. In the Proverbs it says 'as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another' .... likewise the explosive evolution in digital photography – and now iPhoneography – is challenging and pushing and elevating a larger discussion on the power, use, and expression of visual communication. I am sharpened every day to see the abundance of talent, some directed, some still making its way, that finds expression through the iPhone and mobile digital photography.”
Cindy Patrick:
"Using the iPhone as a creative tool has once again ignited my passion for expressing myself via the altered image. With all the apps available to me, the iPhone is my toy camera, my photo oils, and my Photoshop all rolled into one and all on one device. I can now take photographs and make images within minutes, and in the palm of my hand. And since my iPhone is with me at all times, I can make images whenever the creative spark strikes with no waiting to get back to my computer or into my darkroom. For me, that is pure magic!"
Roger Guetta:
“I’ve never really been a traditional photographer. I come from a fine arts background but sometimes dabbled with my Polaroid SX70. I loved pushing the SX70′s emulsion to transform the image. When I did experiment with darkroom techniques, I found myself painting over my black and whites with food coloring. When I bought my DSLR, I immersed myself into Photoshop techniques. Always a manipulator, never a purist. Then, ( insert celestial music here ) I fell in love with the iPhone and the array of apps which make the transformative experience an absolute joy.”
Shirley Drevich:
“Perception is the underlying element in my photography and it is
heightened by the iPhone’s technology. It does not depend on
weather or lighting conditions - The designated “photo shoot” day with
heavy equipment is a thing of the past. It enables me to observe,
record, and most importantly transform images, using apps to
transform color, light, texture, and ambiance. I call this work my “app
dance.” It is an intuitive process married with technology. The
iPhone helps make the real super-real and transforms the super-real
into art.”
Rudy Vogel:
“I have been shutter-snapping consistently since I was a youth, but have only begun “snapping, apping & zapping” since Christmas of 2010. The images I shoot may sometimes be definitive or, what I call that “iconic” image. But, for the type of art I create I view an image as my palette from which I mix & transfer colors, textures, components, and so forth. These variables then become the ingredients I utilize within a work product I create, often times, piece by piece.”
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Vintage Auto iPhoneography by James Clarke
This exhibition aims to raise discussion on iPhoneography, a movement that is transitioning from solely a social media into a fine-art form of its own right. The exhibition will be in the main hall of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, on the first floor.
The show juxtaposes fifteen digital or film photographs of established fine-art photograhpers from the Torpedo Factory with fifteen iPhoneographs, the majority of which comes from P1xels, a photo group based in California that is using the iPhone as their chosen vehicle of self-expression and creation.
Selected Artists: Jim Steele, Maureen Minehan, Min Enghauser, Craig Sterling, Michael Borek, Pete McCutchen, Karen Keating, Fran Livaditis, Elodie Hunting, Hans Borghorst, Paul Moore, Maia Panos, Therese Brown, Butow Maler, Jose Chavarry, Glenn Homann, Ramona Gillentine, James Clarke and Knox Bronson.
The show was also covered by the Washington Post with a very complimentary article written by Michael O'Sullivan. Click here to see the article.
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I was honored to be included in "Mobile P1XELS - The Fine Art of the iPhone 2012" held at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) April 12th through May 5th, 2012.
My image -A Boy With His Head in the Clouds #1- was featured in the show (top row, center image).
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A Boy with his Head in the Clouds #2 was one of two of my iPhonographic images featured in the "Diverging Mediums: Photography vs. iPhoneography" show held at the Torpedo Factory's Target Gallery in Alexandria, VA May 10th through May 31st, 2012.
A Boy with his Head in the Clouds #2
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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.
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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.
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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!
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