Recently, I did an interview with Joanne Carter from TheAppWhisperer.com. You can view the finished product here if you’re curious. Since the interview process was kind of fun, I thought I would post here in case you want to read along. Here is my interview, essentially my response to the question, “Why do you create mobile photography and art?”
So today I was asked the question, why do I create mobile photography and art. To really answer this question, I would have to first examine why I create photography and then specifically, why I use the iPhone. My training, my education is not in photography itself, rather I attended engineering school with the dream of becoming an architect. Dreams change and I found myself a computer programmer stuck behind a desk, wanting to get outside more, so I picked up a camera as an excuse to explore. I am still drawn to architecture, in fact, you will find common themes in my work. Themes that include architecture, natural structure, abandoned places, and quirky, sometimes funky man-made objects I find in my travels. Although my most recent work is abstract, I often find myself returning to these common themes. In my nature, I am an architect and an explorer. In my heart, I like to make things with my hands. In my mind, in my dreams, my eyes see many things and I try to bring them to life using the best means possible.
I’m a fine art photographer, not a journalist, I don’t want to capture the world as it is, instead I prefer showing you the world as I see it or maybe even how I would like it to be.
After years of experimenting with photography in ways such as using creative darkroom techniques and even mixed media like encaustics, I was originally drawn to the iPhone as a means of digital sketching. The simplicity of the iPhone allows me to craft compositions quickly which, to me, is really at the core of photography. Once I got hooked on being able to quickly sketch, it was only a matter of time before I started incorporating the iPhone more into my workflow as a photographer.
I’ve always been surprised when people dismiss the iPhone as being too simple because, for me, that is one of its greatest strengths. Coming from architecture, nobody dismisses a brick as being simple, yet an iPhone is far more complex than brick. In fact, nobody questions when you make something of brick, asking, “you made that out of brick?” rather they just ask the question, “you made that?” Just as the brick becomes a simple building block to the vision of the architect, so too has my iPhone become a building block for my creative vision as a photographer.
I have even started incorporating drawing with my iPhone to work with the opacity of layers in images to give my work more depth. In my latest series, I’m manipulating images of weather maps with my hands, my fingers actually, creating abstracts based on weather patterns. This is both fun and unique, showcasing a technique the iPhone allows me to easily use.
Now, I don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future so I don’t know what the future of photography holds but I recognize that, if you want to see where photography and art in general is going, follow the energy. Right now anyway, iPhone photography has all the energy, all the excitement, all the fun, all the joy that image making can hold. The communities that exist, such as TheAppWhisperer help foster that community and it’s great fun being a part of that. It feels fresh and new and frankly, being an explorer type, I can’t wait to find out where this road leads me next.
Until next time…
PS In keeping with the theme, this image crafted with the iPhone. From a recent shot taken at Zilker Park, in the botanical garden this was layered with a painted background and given a bit of selective focus to highlight the garden structure. The movie itself was crafted in Apple’s iMove, an application I’m finding to be most useful for these sorts of tasks. I was able to make the movie entire using iMove on my iPhone. I hope you enjoy the finished product and a special thanks and shout out to the good folks over at TheAppWhisperer.com for thinking of me and for putting together such a wonderfully good website for mobile photographers and artists.
