Making Things Happen: Now Featured by WeAreJUXT

Making Things Happen, a photo by rsmithing on Flickr.

Two things I’ve been doing lately: travelling and listening to Beats Antique (often simultaneously). The music is, for me, a perfect mood-setter: stimulating, forward moving, and compelling without lyrics. I saw the band twice in 2012, and captured this image of Zoe Jakes at a gig in Asheville, NC. This snapshot makes the perfect foreground for this vista from above the clouds off Florida’s Gulf Coast, brought together via iPhone with the masks & textures of Photoforge2.

Update 3/3: Now Featured by WeAreJUXT

Big thanks to the folks at WeAreJUXT for including this image in their weeklyshowcase! This is the second image of mine featured there (here’s the first) and I’m totally flattered, since they constantly and consistently highlight such great creations with insights from their creators (and I’m not just saying that because I’m there). You should definitely check out the whole JUXT site. Here’s what I say about this image over there:

My favorite art is the kind that gets the viewer to consider things in new ways. I believe that’s the most exciting thing about sharing creativity: the opportunity for a mind-expanding experience. That can happen for me through words, music, or with visual art as in the works of my favorite artists, Salvador Dalí and Jerry Uelsmann. The story behind this image is that I was on a business trip last month and happened to be in the air at just the right time to capture a glorious sunrise from above the clouds. I knew I wanted to remember the moment, but didn’t know what form that would take. This week, the vision hit me: a dancer amid the clouds with selective lighting and textures was what I wanted to make happen. I instantly thought of this silhouette image I shot last year at a show by one of my favorite bands, Beats Antique, which happen to be on heavy rotation during my recent travels. The mysterious form in the foreground is the troupe’s Zoe Jakes as shown backlit from behind a screen with exotic costume accents. The spell-casting pose along with textures, layer modes and and masking in Photoforge2 makes the mind-expansion thing happen.

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• Your Own Personal Grammys (rsmithing.com)
• Laughing Seed Café in Asheville, NC, is Looking for Local Artists to Hang Their Work (carolinaartsnews.wordpress.com)
• Mextures: Free Textures To Grungify Your iPhoneography (cultofmac.com)
• Beats Antique: Spring 2013 Tour (jambase.com)

Friendly Fireman: Single Image Sundays

I met this fellow last week. He is actually a fireman. And he was friendly enough to let me take his picture. I explained that it would end up in a wild edit and showed him some examples on the spot with my phone. He was cool with that. And here we are. Check out more like this at my Pinterest, Flickr, iPhoneArt,Instagram, or 500px collections.

What do you think? Ever met someone randomly and asked if you could take their picture? How’d that go? Let us hear from you in the comments.

Related articles

• Fireman gives kiss of life to dog – Confused.com (confused.com)
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Black & White iPhoneography - Photography Editing Tutorial Video

Here’s another fantastic tutorial video from Guy Yang of The Beginner’s Lens on a subject I’m obviously interested in: black & white iPhoneography, that is, photos taken with the iPhone in grayscale, then intensified into expressive art with selective adjustments (brightness, contrast, sharpening, etc.). Guy takes you through a very thorough step-by-step overview using Filterstorm in this 15-minute professional-level clip, showing how to transform a regular snapshot into a striking composition with selective edits. Note: viewable free for a limited time only.

"This video is all about editing – in particular transforming some of your less than fabulous color photos into stunning black & white photos, all from your iPhone." via iPhone Camera Essentials
 As a graphic designer for many years, I’ll say it’s still amazing to me how we can achieve these results so easily now with just a few minutes, and app, and a thumb — whereas 5 years ago, this required either a PC running full-on Photoshop… or a dark room and major skills. I elaborate more on this in a discussion about Instagram, and am still very much into that experience, more all the time. See also: Become Popular on Instagram.
What did you think of the video? Have you explored iPhoneography? Do you think black & white is more enjoyable than color, or vice versa? What tips and apps do you prefer for editing? Who inspires you? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles & links

• Instagram Makes iPhoneography Exciting (helloely.wordpress.com)
• Sion Fullana (master iPhoneographer; my inspiration and a friendly dude)
• A Moment Captured (manifesty.wordpress.com)
• Train Driver – Fokko Muller Street Photography(fokk0muller.wordpress.com)
• Street Photography in Tempe – Everyday Photography(everydayphotography.wordpress.com)