Through the (Google) Glass: Linda Stokes by BP

I am one of the folks who run the We Are Juxt Twitter account.  I see a lot of the photos that are tagged as well as shared for us to see.  There are many great images and because of the shear volume it’s almost hard to find an artist on Twitter to feature on our site.  Until recently!  Linda had tagged a few of her photos one week and they were great.  Then I realized that she was using Google’s Glass and was intrigued to learn more about her, her process with Glass, and of course her images. 

Folks meet Linda, Linda meet the folks! – BP

I grew up in Texas and Oklahoma,  and carry with me a great love of open space, with an unobstructed view of the sky.  When I was 21, I  went to graduate school in Fine Art at UC Berkeley and ended up staying in California for years, working in animation and special effects for the movie and tv industries. I  directed commercials, music videos, fake TV commercials for SNL, and special FX for Sci-Fi movies . It was great fun, and I got to work with many of the best in the business.  I came back to Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation for a family emergency, and realized  I was ‘home’.

As a life-long artist, I love to draw, especially from life,  Sometimes I  teach college classes in life drawing, design or Art History, but mostly I just do my Art.   I show my work regularly in Dallas, and the southwest, but  the ‘gallery system’ feels like a dying breed..  Social media online is  a great way to share  what I’m working on, and I’m pleased to have over 45,000 followers.  Currently I’m  looking at ways to bring my mobile photography into the 3rd dimension, and thinking about how this habit could be monetized.  The show I’m in right now, I shot the piece with glass, and worked back into a print with drawing.

Music is part of my life and I enjoy listening to world music that has a Native feel to it when I’m editing. Though I love oldies/ nineties music, hip-hop and reggae.  I had the pleasure of spending time in Guatemala learning Spanish, and Austin, Texas for ASL, and I bagged  a California Community College teaching credential, along the way.

Like most artists, I like perspective changes, and changes in perception.   I meditate daily, and have been actively seeking to use my obsession with mobile photography as an exercise in pure seeing, or  seeing ‘that which is ’  I see the sunrise every morning, and watch it set every evening.  I spend much time watching the sky, looking at trees, plants and fellow creatures.

According to Kahlil Gibran,   “When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.”

When I glimpse what I feel to be a distillation of beauty, I try to capture  it from time, and drag it back to the construct, for  display.   I rely on my eye, and faint visceral tugs to know when to shoot, if I remember …and   go into a place where external reality barely intrudes.( Once I’m finished shooting, I realize there are thorns sticking into me and I’m freezing.)  Naturally I am addicted to this feeling, and hope to keep doing it for years.

When I was taking care of my mother while she died, a couple of years back, I longed for an instant mode of creative expression, that didn’t require lots of equipment or supplies.  I’d had a show of new drawings in 2011, and participated  in several gallery shows, but  wasn’t interested in getting back into being bound to the desk or easel.   Pretty soon I discovered the perfect tool was my phone, and  began my experiment of trying to see and distill  the beauty of now.  My phone cams, and their attending editing apps eased my creative anxiety, and another rabidly obsessed Mobile Photographer came into being,

Last summer I went out to Google in Mountain View, Ca, and got setup with glass. (I got picked because  a photo I put in their online contest  February 2013 got thousands of hits and reshares.)  The color and clarity of the Glass device shots are similar to my Samsung Galaxy S3. but it shoots hands free, by voice command and is a wider angle . The technology  is a wild ride, fraught with instant elation when it works right and you get the shot , and abject misery when it screws up… there are so many layers to keep together.  I have my Samsung GalaxyS3,  iPhone, iPad,  and Glass to keep charged and functioning smoothly, and then, there is the never ending task of staying on top of  the seemingly constant updates, where once again, your favorite apps appear unfamiliar,  and have new bugs.

One photo usually isn’t enough to work through a concept, so I tend to work in series. When I saw a wonderful Mack truck by the side of the highway,  I felt that its ominous qualities could be better appreciated  if my legs, in red heels, were in the foreground. Juxtaposed so to speak. This began my “Heel Overhead” series, which includes my legs in front of various presenting pieces of large equipment.  I did one with a big Android statue at Google HQ as my first shot through glass. A lot of jaws dropped, but I just HAD to.

I  like driving around looking at things, and  love using my car in my work, whether shooting  through the windshield or getting out and shooting the car in a cool spot. I love shooting rain through the windshield,  and shooting with Glass is hands free, easier while driving.  I try to catch those  places in the road where you can’t see where the road ahead goes, or if its even there.

I’m back living in the middle of nowhere, with vast expanses of earth and sky, and the wonder of new love.  My partner and I are exploring our own construct of what life and love can entail,  in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma.  We are on some acreage, with no city services, no TV,  a wood stove for heat, and its awesome!

My favorite  Inspirational Hero has always been Che Guevara,  whose very spirit embodies the idea that one person taking actions from the heart can change things.  When I was young,  I got to meet and  hang out with  numerous artists and writers who were true to their own instincts,  notably Andy Warhol, Williams Burroughs and Peter Voulkos.   People who take action inspire me, and the Occupy movement, and Anonymous  are heartening.  In my own family, my Granny  inspired me with her ability to do whatever needed to be done, with what she had on hand. She grew vegetables, milked goats, made butter, sewed clothes without a pattern, and could handle a huge chainsaw into her seventies.. Throughout her life, she continued doing  things she’d never done before,  like finally getting her driver’s license at an advanced age.

Most of my shots are through glass, at least partially.  I wear it when I drive,  and when out shooting.  It works pretty well inside the car,  if you keep your tunes dialed down.  It has voice activation, so you don’t have to touch it to shoot, as long as it can  hear you..  It doesn’t understand well in high wind, and I’ve had to manually shoot it in storms, which is cumbersome.

There is no viewfinder in the glass, and you don’t see anything when you are shooting.  You just look, and when you see a shot, you say “Okay Glass, take a picture”  The device is  above your right eye, held up with a nose piece on a metal band, like wearing glasses. There are other commands, for shooting video, sharing to your Google+ circles, and adding captions.  You can check your email, message people, use your phone,  see what’s happening on your Google+, Facebook or Twitter streams, check the news, get maps and directions,  find public transportation and see how long it will take you to get somewhere. Its tethered to your phone as a bluetooth device.

That’s all pretty cool, but the best thing is shooting hands free. Around here, I’ve been asked if it is a medical device.

My photos all auto-upload to a Picasa web album on Google+..thats android, iphone, ipad and glass.  If I want, they can be edited with the Google+ editor, which is really Snapseed.  Or, I  edit them  on the phone, and my first choice is Snapseed. This works great for shots that just need a little tweaking.

My editing style is intuitive, and begins when I’m shooting.  Like a lot of people, I enjoy combining my favorite images.  I shot the tractor, screen left , through glass, with the intent of pairing a perfect cloud in the blank area above. The  cloud appeared later, and I framed it  until  it looked like it would rock with the tractor, and snapped it with my iphone.  I took both images   through Snapseed ‘Tune Image’, and then to an image blending app on my ipad.,

PhotoBlender, and Image Blend are useful.   There,  I blended  them  in an old school DX, and took the composited photo back into Snapseed for texture and a little  drama.

Other apps I like are Photo fx Ultra, for its neutral density grad, and color grads, that can really add subtle color to landscapes. I also enjoy LensLight for popping lights in night shots. On android I like Pixlr Express, and several filter apps… ( they were wiped off my phone when I had to get it reset to factory settings last week.  Now I need to reinstall those…never a dull minute!)  I told the Glass Developers last summer they needed to have editing apps, at least Snapseed in the glass, after all Google owns it, too. I’m betting in a few months when my glass updates, it will appear.  The thing that makes my editing a pain is Android vs Apple. I use them both but they don’t make it easy.

Nature always inspire me, and so do other mobile photographers, with the different ways they glimpse their worlds. It totally rocks to be able to see work from all over the world on photo social sites.  I believe this is Fine Art of now.  Its new, and unsullied by rules or tradition. Its instant, and as  available as the creative spirit in us all.

Find Linda and her work below:
Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Twitter

About Author

Brad Puet

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