I confess! I was up playing with “the crack app” the other night. For those of you who don’t know, I have a friend, Tazz, who I introduced to an app for our phones. Now, in all fairness (sorry, Tazz, you know this is true!) I tried to warn her about it. I said, and I don’t recall my exact words here, but I said something along the lines of, “you are going to get addicted. I stayed up until 1 am the other night playing with it. I’m warning you…” She insisted I share the app with her and, of course, I did, but it wound up keeping her awake until the wee hours of the morning as well. (Of course, she made beautiful images with it but, you know, at one am in the morning.)
“It’s those dice!” She said to me. “I just want to keep hitting those dice!”
Yes, indeed. The dice are very addictive. What dice are we talking about? Well, you see, the app has these little dice in it and, when you hit the dice, it pulls two random images from your phone’s camera roll and super imposes them atop one another. Sounds simple enough, right? It is, why, it is just that simple. The problem is it’s also maddeningly addictive. You want to just keep hitting the dice one more time, just one more time. Before you know it? Yup. You too are up until the wee hours of the morning playing with “the crack app.” (I can’t go to sleep, I have just one more roll in me!) Now, I’ve tried to bargain with the dice, I’ve tried using logic, reason, even resorting to a timer but, what can I say, I just keep wanting to hit those little dice. Ugh! So addictive that is.
I must confess, I have always loved multiple exposures. I love the idea of layering and working with opacity, be it in camera or by introducing it some other way. I used to sandwich slides back in the day. I do composites in Photoshop. I used to do 2X in camera even. I paint atop photos. I shoot a lot of reflections. I’ve always been in love with the layer, it’s just my jam, okay? There’s just something about combining the layer with those little dice. Man, oh man, it’s truly addictive! I love the idea of glazing a photograph or images that work with multiple surfaces. It’s just so fascinating to me. And, the crack app? The crack app let’s you make layer after layer with just a roll of the dice. Oh, how fun it is!
By now you are either turned off completely by this app or dying to get your hands on it. In case you fall into that last category, it’s called, “Diana Photo.” It takes it’s name from the old “Diana” camera, now a collector’s item, but a camera I used to shoot back in the day. A “Diana” is actually a plastic (toy) camera with a toy lens which they used to give away as carnival prizes at fairs and the like. Since it was a cheap camera, it did not have a fancy way to advance the film, so you had to turn it yourself and, because of this, one could easily make multiple exposures with it (sometimes, you would do this accidentally and wind up with one long strip of film and be left wondering how or where to cut it.)
Maybe someday I’ll take a photo of my “real” Diana so you can see what it looks like and what the resulting images looked like. Until then, you’ll just have to settle for the “Diana” that is in the app store. It goes without saying really but, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Until next time…
PS We’re nearing the end of my giveaway. To celebrate the launch of my new online gallery, Carol’s Little World, I’m giving away a fine art print valued at $350. The print is a limited edition (24) printed on traditional Japanese paper, hand signed and comes framed, finished to a 16×20 inch size, ready to hang in your space. If you have already joined Carol’s Little World, you’re already entered for a chance to win. If not, you can join my list here: http://bit.ly/cs_oct20
This image and many others are now available at Carol’s Little World here: https://www.carolslittleworld.com/
