1000 Words IPA February 2013 part 2

We Are Juxt believes that a picture is worth a thousand words, we tell stories through our photos, and sometimes a photo can say more than a whole book ever could. These folks I’ve picked to showcase today are from the site iPhoneArt.com ( IPA ) which has some of the most fascinating and beautiful galleries of work I’ve ever seen in one place. It is a small community, but everyone there is a true artist in every way. These are a few that submitted to the 1000 words group, we will try and do this on a once or twice a month bases, it all depends on the number of submissions we get. Please visit the site and these artists galleries, there’s plenty more where they came from. To see more from this beautiful gallery go here.

Curated by Mike H.

To see previous 1000 Words from Flickr click here.
To see previous 1000 Words from IPA click here.

Juxt thanks you for your contributions!

The Polkadot Bow by Sarah Jarrett

IPA / Flickr / Website / Blog

In all my images I am really interested in exploring meeting points between photography and painting. I cannot explain why only that it is endlessly fascinating to me and has been since I walked through the doors to start a Photography Degree at Art College. In my late teens I was physically painting onto the surface of my prints, now I am doing the same but digitally on an iPad or an iPod touch. There is no planning in my pictures, it is a process of evolution that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. Often I am working on a series and then there will be connections and themes. I feel like I am in the infancy of my development as an image maker because I am only skimming the surface of what I think is achievable and the tools that apps offer are becoming more and more exciting as they evolve. I often use a self portrait as a starting point. In Superimpose I will play about with changing some aspects of the face – usually the eyes. I have a bank of eyes that I like from my other pictures. I like to just alter the scale enough to create a distortion. I move the image into Procreate and I use painting and drawing tools to work on top of the photographic image. Artrage was my painting app of choice for a long time but now its Procreate. I love the choice of brushes and media. I love making my own brushes. In this image I wanted the red to emphasize the pale skin and contrast with the black of the hair. I love scratches, paint sprays and drips. I just keep working until I feel the process is complete. I am beta testing another painting app that has some fantastic brushes and I used it a little bit here. I finish with Laminar to tweak curves, color etc.

Lazily Floating by Lola Mitchell

IPA / Flickr

Thank you for featuring this photo.

The background is the river Seine in Paris right after I threw some of my fathers ashes into it last September. We had been there two weeks and I had just finished sending all my dad’s stuff to myself in Los Angeles that morning and had one more day in Paris. It must have been midnight and a rainy night in Paris. I had walked with my husband looking for a spot to throw some of my fathers ashes. We went under the bridge and did it, I took that photo right after. The foreground was one of those nights where we were all playing, dancing and my daughter took a break and was looking at her family. It just reminded me that I have built a wonderful one and that he is still there floating around.

Background is camera+, foreground hipstamatic. Upper left is a reflection and lower is a feather taken with kitcam. I combined all of these images in superimpose. Added a filter in luminance. Adjusted filter strength in blender.

The Commitment by Rob Pearson-Wright
IPA / Flickr / Website

I was having one last cigarette outside King’s Cross Station before taking a long train ride from London to Scotland and I saw a fellow traveller doing the same. As I observed him he appeared in deep thought, his eyes far away in contemplation. My natural instinct to capture this moment kicked in and I raised my iPhone 4 to my ear as if to make a call. One squeeze of the volume button and I had him frozen in time forever.

When it came to editing the shot aboard my train I began to think of reasons why he looked so pensive and wistful. I went off on various tangents. Was he fed up with his life or fed up with a job that sends him travelling around the country at the drop of a hat. Maybe he was on one last mission before early retirement or going home to face the music, before being sent to the dog house for not putting his socks in the laundry basket for the umpteenth time. In the end I gave the photo the following words to accompany it which then lead to the title, ‘The Commitment’.

‘Sometimes he wondered if it was worth doing. Occasionally he doubted his motives. However, he never forgot where the journey started and where it would end. He would see this through. One way or the other.’

The edit process was fairly straightforward as I knew the result I was looking for. Starting in Snapseed I added a little bit of the Drama filter and then tweaked the brightness, contrast and white balance. I used BigLens to pull the guy in to deep focus and then in Noir I adjusted the lighting to highlight him. Finally as it was a cold and bleak day and possibly to suit the guy’s mood I scuzzed the image up a bit in ScratchCam.

There Where She Is by Candice Chidiac
IPA / Flickr / Facebook / Eye’Em: @candicechidiac

For years and years in Lebanon people have hired domestic help, it is the norm. This girl is probably from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

These girls leave their families behind, young children, husbands, elderly parents. They arrive here knowing nothing and yet sometimes are expected to know everything. They stay for 2 to 3 years, sometimes longer, sometimes they even chose to stay here for good. Working with good families, with not so good families. They are given their own rooms but sometimes they sleep on mattresses in the kitchen. They get fed well, and sometimes not well at all. They get a day or two off, or maybe none at all. The list goes on, it can be a good list and it can be a bad list, and sometimes a very bad list. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not so good. it’s all a question of luck, on both sides. What is for sure is that these girls arrive here having heard all sorts of stories about coming here, and yet they chose to come, out of necessity, desperation even. This girl is physically here but her eyes tell a different story.

The original image was shot with the Tinto lens on Hipstamatic and edited with Snapseed, Camera Awesome and Tiffen FX.

Please, Please, Please by Christy Gibney
IPA / Flickr

Over the past couple of years I’ve found my voice through self-portraits and use them regularly to express feelings that I can’t seem to put into words. Often coupled with song lyrics or quotes, each image is like a page from a visual journal of my life. And while I shoot and edit as a form of art therapy for myself, it’s always a bonus if someone connects with what I’m trying to say within the four corners of my work.

This image captures a deeply personal and important moment in a journey I’ve been on for a long time. I won’t go into the details here, but when I look at this photo it reminds me of the spectrum of emotions I was experiencing on that day—hope, fear, excitement, anticipation, desperation, sadness, and more.

As for process, I knew I wanted to shoot from overhead so I mounted my iPhone on the ceiling fan over my bed. Lately I’ve been using quite a few apps and layers to add different elements to my photos, but for this one I wanted to keep it simple and real so I did minimal editing. I used Camera+ (for the self-timer), Retouch (to smooth the background a bit) and Snapseed (to crop, rotate, convert to B&W, and add a few filters). I paired the final image with this song lyric, ’cause who doesn’t love The Smiths when they’re feeling a little low…

Please, please, please
Let me
Let me
Let me
Let me, get what I want this time.

Big thanks to Mike for inviting me to contribute to this showcase here on Juxt, I truly appreciate the opportunity!

Interval / Into The Dark IV by Veronica Moloney

IPA / Flickr / Tumblr / Instagram

This photo is from a series called Interval/into the dark. A little over a year ago I decided to explore and present with my art, the dark and light. Sometimes it’s the dark thoughts, sometimes it’s the inexplicable joy we feel. I really enjoy provoking the emotional response in people.

These darker works are contrasted by my Interval/into the light series. I am currently underway with a collab series with Ashley Callaghan aka @ailovelyghe (on instagram) called, “My Grace is Sufficient.”
It’s basically a tale by photos of the human condition.

When I begin editing a photo, many times I already have an idea of what I want the final piece to look like. I shoot the native photo on my iPhone, send it to my iPad and begin the process. I’ve learned to save my final edits in the highest resolution which is necessary for entering my photos into competitions and other galleries which I belong to.

This photo was shot with the slow shutter app in the evening in my home with very bright lighting in front of me. I will usually begin a basic edit in snapspeed to adjust brightness, contrast, color and sharpness. At this point I’m ready to begin my editing in any given app. I began with noir just to create a high contrast, bright photo. I used blur fx to soften the image with the Gaussian setting. I don’t like paying for stock photography for textures, so I create my own with my iPhone, I really like the ones created with hipstamatic.

I applied a texture layer in the blender app, as well as a glitter texture that I shot of some Christmas wrapping paper. I ran this photo through procreate to add the red to the lips and hair.
The flowers were from a summer photo of peonies, and I used lens light to give them some “pop.” That pretty much completed this photo.