by Josh St. Germain | Oct 5, 2014 | Stories
Welcome to the tenth edition of the GRRYO 1000 Words Facebook Showcase! Since the creation of the Facebook group, we have seen it grow and watched inspiring work being posted daily. We are happy to be able to showcase some of the outstanding work that is being shared.
GRRYO believes that mobile photographers/ artists tell stories through the photographs/ images and art that represents their families, their environment, themselves. This is important because of the level of communication that is portrayed in imaging today.
We want to support the mobile arts community by having a place for artists to share, discuss, and critique (if requested by individual). These dialogues help the individuals and the community to grow.
We look forward to you and your art. We thank you for your contribution to the mobile photography/ arts community. To submit your work click here.
“Let me ease your pain…” by Rob Depaolo
“I have always had a thing for “dark” art as well as for the steampunk aesthetic. In particular, the “Plague Doctor” look has always fascinated me, and I’ve recently acquired a few different masks of this sort to use in some of my conceptual work. This photo is the first in what will be an ongoing series that I will add to slowly over time. I won’t say where it is going, but it will continue to evolve at a slow pace.
As human beings, we all wear various “masks” throughout our lives. They are the different personas, attitudes, and images that we “wear” when interacting with others. Deep down we know that we are all hiding our true selves from others, and to see someone wearing a mask can be an unsettling reminder of our own inauthenticity. If we were truly comfortable with ourselves as we really are, the sight of someone else in a mask would be as natural as seeing clouds in the sky.
This photo was shot with an iPhone 5s using the beta version of the new 645 Pro with manual controls. The manual exposure control, in particular, made it easier to get the exposure I wanted for the dark feel of this image. I edited this photo in primarily in Filterstorm Neue with subtle textures added in Mextures.”
On most days, I would say that the intricate textures, shape, and intimate quality of this Queen Anne’s Lace drew me to this particular flower. Although, this day, very soon after the recent death of my dad, it was more about capturing the beauty that exists all around us, everywhere.Setup included small studio with black backdrop with lighting. Initial shot was taken using Pureshot. The edit was in Snapseed, adjusting the brightness and adding details. I then used the curves feature in Filterstorm/Nueue to dramatically darken the background. The shot is titled… Fibonacci
“The queens command” by Stef LP
Website
“Thrilled to be able to do multiple exposures with my iPad I began experimenting with it.
This particular shot came after a series of light and shadow that felt empty.
I wanted to add something
Randomly hanging around,
-this mask worked well for me.
These heads can be very moody looking and represent a neutral but universal presentation of being.
There was no post processing other then increasing contrast.”
“The Rudeboy Barbers at Somerset House” by Vivi Hanson
Apps used : ProCamera 7 to take photo, Snapseed, BlurFX, Mextures
I love visiting Somerset House in London http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/ and always go in to photograph it’s magnificent staircase! Somerset House always has really interesting exhibitions and on this occasion there was a fantastic exhibition of The Return of the Rudeboy which combined beautiful portrait photography, music, fashion and barbering! http://modernbarber.co.uk/check-in-at-somerset-house-for-return-of-the-rudeboy/ The set up was wonderful and I asked the barber if I could take his photo and he gave me a huge smile! Loved that I got the customer in the mirror!
I wanted to focus my edit on the barber and his customer so used BlurFX to blur everything else out. Then edited my image using one of my B&W presets in Mextures.
“Little Dolls” by Aldo Pacheco
Flickr // EyeEm
I took the photo with native camera from iPhone 4s, when I went to a local thrift store looking of I don’t remember what. Then I get to the toys section of the store and I found little dolls form many brands packed in plastic bags, and the “babies” called my attention, they look weird and kind of sexual. So I took the chance to shot some photos before I left the store empty handed.
The process was very simple and I only used Snapseed to work around the color and make it soft, the add a little grunge and crop to square format
“Fok” by Andy Alexandre
Instagram // Facebook
I’m Andy, i’m french from Marseille, and my way is to use only iPhone to take and to edit pictures.
I like to work on bodies and faces with different mood and touch.
All male bodies part are mine.
– Fok – (inspired by Olafur Arnalds – music)
To start i used “Timer” to shoot myself with delay.
I use “Mextures” to create a texture background.
With “Image Blender” I can overlay my selfie onto the background picture.
I use “IcoloramaS” to create this effect explode on my head.
To add clouds i use “SpacePaint”
And finaly “Mextures” to add some scratch for a vintage atmosphere.
by Josh St. Germain | Sep 5, 2014 | Josh St. Germain, Stories
Yesterday, EyeEm published a blog post that announced the new missions in partnership with The Huffington Post. They announced three new ways to participate which can be viewed on their FULL BLOG POST. What immediately grabbed my attention was the third mission. They are calling for photos about meaningful stories from EyeEm members. Who better to get involved than the Grryo community!! I’d love nothing more than to see our community members be selected and published in the world renowned Huffington Post.
So, this is your call to action!! Let’s show them the power of storytelling through our images. Below is all the info on how to get involved…
“The third way to become a part of the story is sharing your photos in a new EyeEm album called Huffington Post Stories. Simply tag your photos about stories that you would like to tell with The Huffington Post and we will be looking through this album, connect you with The Huffington Post and you may get the opportunity to blog about your story to a large audience.
We truly feel like this is just the beginning of something special. Your photos will always have attribution along with a link, so the exposure that you’ll be getting is immense. It’s a win for you, the photographer, and for journalists. That’s what makes us proud of this announcement.” – EyeEm Team
by Josh St. Germain | Sep 2, 2014 | Josh St. Germain, Stories
I would like to take you back to October 15th of 2012 of my life. My wife and I closed on our first house together that morning. We had spent a taxing ten months looking at every house that came onto the troubled real estate market. We were fortunate enough to finally step into one and know it was home. We knew this was where our family would grow… and so it did.
Two months prior to finding our new home, we had started trying to get pregnant again. It was two days after we held our new house keys, that my wife came to me with the news of a positive pregnancy test. I spent the remaining week and half painting and preparing for our move after work each day. I’ll be the first to admit, it was an overwhelming time for all of us.
During the days of moving our material lives from one place to the other, my wife called me on her way in to work and hesitantly told me that she just didn’t “feel right”. Neither of us wanted to believe that anything could be wrong. After tense days of blood work, doctors visits and unbelievable anxiety, we received the call that we feared. It was October 31st, Halloween, as we were getting our two kids ready in their costumes, in our new home, that we knew our family wouldn’t be growing as soon as we expected.
7/11/14 4:57 am
I cannot pretend to know the truth of how a miscarriage affects the mother. I’ll say this… watching my partner, my love, go through it, broke my heart every day. The doctor said we’d need to wait at least two months before considering trying again. Emotions ran high as we entered the holiday season and remained as strong as we could for each other and our two children.
After Christmas passed, we decided to continue trying. I believe we both shared an unspoken fear that this road may end in heartache once again. Knowing that were both unwilling to give up and that no matter what happens we had two wonderful children that brought us so much joy, we knew it was the right decision.
Eleven months came and went as twenty seven days of hope followed by one day of knowing that this month wasn’t the one. November 17th 2013, my wife’s birthday, that 28th day brought something different this time. I’ll never forget being woken up by my teary eyed wife who had just seen the test results that she thought she may never see again. I hadn’t breathed that deeply in over a year.
Thirty four weeks later, seventeen days earlier than expected, my wife came home from work and began having contractions. Her scheduled appointment for a repeat c-section wasn’t for ten days. To say we weren’t prepared would be an understatement. It was just past midnight when we decided to head to the hospital.
7/11/14 3:59 am
Among the few things I managed to grab on our way out the door, was my smartphone. The obvious reasoning was to be able to contact family and friends with updates from the hospital. What I didn’t consider at the time, was that I’d be able to capture a timeline of moments from this unexpected event. The images shared here are of both significant and mundane moments during our early visit to the hospital…
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by Josh St. Germain | Jul 29, 2014 | Stories
To understand where Chloe is now you need to understand where Chloe began her journey and where it is headed. The Reinvention of Chloe is a collaborative effort by much of the Grryo team to realize a dream our dear friend Ale began before his death. We do hope you enjoy the journey.
———————-
All that remained within was nothing
Nothing
She looked inward into this nothingness and saw freedom. There was now nothing in her way. Walking through the ashes of the pain inside of her she was a feather awaiting a summer breeze.
Nothing suddenly became everything
Nothing. Everything. Chloe was reborn
As she turned and took that first step, a phoenix, she was reborn from the ashes of ink and paper smoldering in her shadow.
That was the deepest breath Chloe had taken in years
by Josh St. Germain | Jul 27, 2014 | 1000 Words, Josh St. Germain, Stories
Welcome to the eighth edition of the GRRYO 1000 Words Facebook Showcase! Since the creation of the Facebook group, we have seen it grow and watched inspiring work being posted daily. We are happy to be able to showcase some of the outstanding work that is being shared.
GRRYO believes that mobile photographers/ artists tell stories through the photographs/ images and art that represents their families, their environment, themselves. This is important because of the level of communication that is portrayed in imaging today.
We want to support the mobile arts community by having a place for artists to share, discuss, and critique (if requested by individual). These dialogues help the individuals and the community to grow.
We look forward to you and your art. We thank you for your contribution to the mobile photography/ arts community. To submit your work click here.
This month’s submissions showed us that the quality and creativity of our artists is growing exponentially and shows no signs of stopping! Last week my wife and I were happily surprised with the birth of our son… 10 days earlier than expected! Due to my time spent in the hospital and getting us settled in back at home, I was unable to give my selected artists the usual amount of time to submit the stories behind the images I had selected from the group. Due to this, there were a few that were unable to meet the short deadline. So, I am asking our audience to please take a few moments to go view the GRRYO – 1000 Words Facebook Showcase – Submission group and see the brilliant work being submitted.
Thank you as always for the participation and support!
“She Thought She Was Safer This Way” by Meri Walker
EyeEm // Website // Flickr // Blog
Apps used : longexposure, cameramatic, afterlight, afterfocus, mextures
After four years, making photographs and paintings with my iPhone remains one of the strangest things I do. I say this because when I go walking with my phone camera, what I’m doing is waiting for a call.
The experience of walking with any camera in hand has always felt to me like a kind of “hunting” and being hunted – at the same time. But, from the beginning, walking with my iPhone, with no special lenses, no extra filters, no “gear,” I have felt free, like a child, to look and listen for someone/something to call me – without words.
“She Thought She Was Safer This Way” started with me and my dog, Blaze, walking along Bear Creek late in the afternoon. It was early in June and the long low light filtering through the fresh green leaves was highlighting patches here and there in the gathering dark. Giant thistles had begun fluffing out and the one in this shot was lit like she was on her own little stage. I stopped to watch the wind blow her and was surprised to see that nothing happened to her hairdo. I climbed over some vines to get closer and made several shots from different positions, using LongExpo to gather all the light and detail I could in the low-light situation. The more shots I made, the more I noticed how tough her helmet of hair was.
Many of us who love plants but aren’t botanists carry around fanciful notions that these thistles are soft, sweet and feminine, standing passively in fields, waiting for a child’s soft hand to pick them and blow their seeds to the wind. However, spending time with this little beauty, she used my phone to tell me that her 360-degree helmet was more like armor than some gauzy, fancy-girl headress. At this stage of life, I could easily identify.
When I got home and looked carefully at the images, I imported the best shot into Cameramatic, a quirky little square-format app I recently learned about from Eloise Capet that has some interesting black-and-white films and lenses. Then I used Afterlight and Afterfocus to bring up contrast and clarity in the thistle structure and suppress detail in the surrounding areas. helped add a little unifying texture without compromising the detail.
As is so often the case for me, as I approached the end of the apping process, I heard the image title whispered into my right ear. It almost doesn’t freak me out anymore when an image calls me with its title. It’s like a little blessing. As I said, having a camera in my phone – and a phone in my camera – remains one of the wierdest experiences I’ve had in this life.
“Enlightened Men Always Escape” by Stephane Vereecken
Website
The “Enlightened Men Always Escape” picture was created in the studio with two models. Then reworked on photoshop touch for duplicate characters and add prison bars, hand-drawn. And this is Repix and Snapseed applications , that were used to process the image.
I worked for about two years with models wearing masks to express deletion of the individual and of the human person, crushed by the mass of people on earth. The individual alone and lonely is no longer possible … We are part of a greater whole and our move is watched constantly.
I am also at this time, actually going to make some experiments on social networks for this purpose. And it’s very interesting how people react.
This is my new lab.
This picture shows the characters imprisoned and only a person realizes that he can escape. Because this person, who has a clear face, and light out of his head, is the only one with knowledge. And because without knowing things in life, and the world, it remains in place and imprisoned.
And masks monkeys bring us back to our beastly origins and prehistoric.
We must escape and then show the way for others.
“The City Without You” by Aldo Pacheco
Flickr // EyeEm
the title came after I almost finished the edition and because my love ones are on a trip back home (Lima Peru). express for me some kind of sadness, the sensation of not to being with them for a month and a song of one of Joaquin Sabina (spanish singer/song writer) “Calle Melancolia” (Street Melancholia) that talks about a lonely person that life in that street and he wants to move to the Street Happiness, but always is to late… anyway…. it’s a city without you
Edition :
The photo edition starts with 2 different photos, the first on is a selfi of me and my daughter (Sabina) at the airport the day they left and the second one was of some mechanic games at a ribfest fair in Toronto. For both of them I used Clever Painter app to get the thick brush. I worked also with the selfi in Repix with Drips and Spray edition tools.
In iColorama I combine and mix the second (after and third photo, and re-combine the result with the previous one. as a result of that we got the “buildings”. Next step was the drawing lines done with Scketchbook Mobile app. Finally Snapseed for image tuning, crop, grunge and retroflex filter
“At Days End” by Rob Depaolo
This image was taken at Salisbury Beach Reservation in Massachusetts earlier this summer while walking the shore with my family one evening.
As I was taking various shots, this young girl walked down into the water before quickly turning and running back out. There was something about how she was approaching the water with caution at first that grabbed my attention. I snapped away and managed to get this one image that really captured the feel of the moment.
All editing was done in Filterstorm Neue on my iPhone (the shot was originally taken with PureShot). I cropped the image in a bit to better frame the girl, converted to black and white and made a few typical adjustments to the levels and contrast. I used the clone tool to remove a part of another person that remained in the left side of the frame. Finally, I added a bit of vignetting (I love a vignette!) and that’s it! I like to keep thing relatively simple in my editing workflow.
“Safari” by Kathy Clay
This image was inspired by a recent trip we took to a Game Lodge near Kruger National Park in South Africa. The experience was amazing. We went out twice a day in open jeeps and saw more animals than I ever imagined.
I took hundreds of photos and the one thing that was constant in many of the photos was the back of the Trackers head (his name was Peter). He sat on a small fold up chair attached to the front of the jeep. I tried to capture the beauty and silence of the open savanna in the photo.
The apps I used we’re Superimpose, Snapseed and IColorama.
“Tubos” by Patricia Larson
Instagram // EyeEm // Flickr
Photo taken with iPhone 5s
This photo was taken at my work, this structure belongs to a machine that generates electricity with gas, daylight shines on the structure with much sunshine. It did not require any editing, just put it in black and white with the filters of camera+
App used : Camera +
“Turn Away Before He Sees You” by Andrea Koerner
Instagram // Flickr // Website
This photo came about when another mobile photographer reminded me about the double exposure feature of Hipstamatic. I’ve always loved Hipstamatic and it turns out the double exposure feature is terrific for the self portraits I love to do. This one was done using the Hongdae HipstaPak(Yoona lens and Blanko 012 film). One of my favorite combo for taking photos of flowers in a vase. This one was a self portrait double exposed with a flower that was past it’s prime. The title came about from the intensity of the eyes in the photo.
