by Rebecca Cornwell | Sep 16, 2012 | Showcases, Sunday Blues Edit
Rebecca: This week when Izzy and I looked through the #sundaybluesedit tag together, I began to realize what an amazing evolution we have made. I worried about giving up some ownership of the tag but she has seamlessly integrated and breathed new life into the blues with the freshest of ideas and brand new eyes. We both feel incredibly honored that our bluesers bring their most personal moments and emotions to the tag. Choosing features is still every bit as difficult with two as it was with one but being able to bounce ideas and thoughts off each other helps bring focus to the goal of the #sundaybluesedit. We mutually love this image of Helen’s for reasons we most likely share. We are all three mothers to small children. There are times when you view your children in an incredibly clear light. You see them moving away from you to independence. It’s a bittersweet emotion that fills a parent with both pride and sadness. This image of Helen’s perfectly illustrates that feeling. If you have children, take a moment and look at them clearly today. Feel the pride of what you have accomplished as they take their baby steps away from you. Happy Sunday.
Helen: The picture is of my daughter and firstborn, Roisin. Emotions have been running high in our home of late, as she has just hit the monumental milestone of starting nursery at our local primary school. I took this photo on a windy walk at a local beauty spot on the day before her first full school session. Seeing her stood at the edge of the valley staring out at the landscape seemed to capture perfectly the mood of the moment – my little girl about to embark on a new adventure on her own.
Throughout my life I have always needed a creative outlet. Be it sketching, writing, music or crafting, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t have a little project on the go. When I became a mother 3 years ago I found, like every other parent, that my ‘me’ time was significantly reduced, even more so when we added to our brood last year. The discovery of Instagram and mobile photography was a wonderful revelation for me. A fulfilling creative outlet, which fits perfectly around family life: I snap away during the day and edit when my babes are in bed. I joined Instagram in February this year- before this I had always admired photography but never knew a thing about it. Mobile photography got under my skin from the word ‘go’ – I photograph and edit every day without fail, as well as finding inspiration and learning from the amazing talent on IG. I am starting to find my style now. People often describe my photos as ‘vintage’ or ‘dreamlike’ – I simply try to color them with the emotion that I feel in those moments. I have had such a steep and wonderful learning curve – long may it continue.
Take some time and view Helen’s wonderful evolution on Instagram at user name @littlerose81.
by Rebecca Cornwell | Sep 9, 2012 | Showcases, Sunday Blues Edit
met-a-mor-pho-sis
This sunday I want to introduce you an amazing artist @_giorgopoliti_ . George , Like me is and artist of self introspection who lays it all out in his work. If you look chronologically through is feed, you can follow his life and feel but ups and downs. On top of his brilliance and an emotional thinker, he is a master of the edit. His skills are beyond those most of us editors dream of having.
This week I’ve made another giant leap in my ever growing tag. I’ve added a real partner to the group to help share the amazing growth of the tag and aid in giving it the attention it deserves. Her name is Izzy and she goes by the profile name @elvisandme. Like George and me, Izzy doesn’t shy from real life emotion. Maybe thats how we chose this incredible image together?
I encourage you to take a long stroll through George’s stream. You will come away with a different understanding of what it means to be human. Happy Sunday and please help me welcome Izzy to the team. So far she has been the best of lifesavers.
George:
met·a·mor·pho·sis
n. pl. met·a·mor·pho·ses
A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function.
I find it hard to explain what I do… I am my own worst critic… My work is random and deeply personal. I sometimes feel that it is way too revealing but it is also a means of showing my fears and pushing my boundaries. It is a self exploratory exercise in creating little instances of time, within a small frame, which express how I’m feeling – a form of mindscape therapy. It is this internal struggle that defines my work and is part of the overall creative process.
By accident I stumbled into mobile photography while discovering the capabilities of the camera. I found the possibilities to twist reality endless. That was roughly a year and a half ago.
For me, mobile photography is a form of expression – an extension of identity. I work with layers to instill a mood, a feeling, a sense of mystery, a dark narrative. If it connects with others, it is completely unintentional and a bonus. Each piece is an unanswered question – a stepping stone of exploration.
While coming to terms with my grief and trying to make sense of my father’s passing 6 months ago, I stopped creating. Time stood still. I did not have the energy nor the inclination. I turned to visual documentation and chasing light, focussing on the moment rather than the process.
The fog has lifted a little and I’ve started twisting reality again. I used the #sundaybluesedit to push me back into creating those little instances of time, to challenge my fears and play with them again.
“Metamorphoses” comes from the Greek word “transformations”. It pretty much sums up my current situation and encapsulates the overall theme of my work.
“The demons are innumerable, arrive at the most inappropriate times, and create panic and terror… but I have learned that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage….” Ingmar Bergman
Many thanks Rebecca and Juxt
You can see more of George’s perfect work at;
iphoneart – http://www.iphoneart.com/_giorgopoliti_
flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/politigrafix/
eyem – _giorgopoliti_
by Rebecca Cornwell | Sep 2, 2012 | Showcases, Sunday Blues Edit
Ernestine
Last Sunday I was so busy. It seemed as if there were more blue images than ever before. I stumbled on this image of Ernestine and I thought there was a familiarity in her face. Do I know her? I don’t, but like me David has recently spent a lot of time with images from the past. There is a way that I look into the eyes of the person in an old photograph that helps me understand myself. The universality of humanity. David is a very creative and open experimenter. You will find something in his stream that helps you understand yourself. Happy Sunday!
David: First of all, many thanks to Rebecca for shining this spotlight on my work. I feel honored, especially since her weekly Instagram gathering of photos, the Sunday Blues Edit, has been an inspiration for me, as have her own photos.
I’ve taught writing & literature at Ripon College in Wisconsin for 25 years. I am also a poet, with six collections of my poems published. Photography as an art form has been a lifelong interest of mine, but up until about five years ago it was mostly as viewer, not as creator of anything besides snapshots. I didn’t get serious until acquiring my first digital camera in 2007, which was an entirely unimpressive 3 megapixel point-and-shoot. But soon enough I was hooked, moving on to a slightly better point-and-shoot, and finally my iPhone4.
I’ve also been married for 37 years to a wonderful visual artist–who paints and draws, does printmaking, and sometimes makes photos. Though I’m serious about my photography, I’m happy to call myself an amateur; my wife remains the real artist in the family. Still, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say the iPhone changed my life. I discovered Chase Jarvis’s book The Best Camera Is the One That’s With You at a local library, and that was that: I’ve been more or less obsessed ever since, spending part of most days shooting or editing photos on my phone. I’ve been active on Instagram for about a year now.
Slowly but steadily I’ve been learning about apps and editing, reading blogs on mobile photography, visiting photo web sites, and, of course, exploring the Instagram community (where I am @doctorjazz). Honestly, I’ve been having a blast moving into this very different creative realm. As many have said, mobile photography is addictive, and can help you see the world in new ways. It certainly makes moving through each day more interesting, I find.
In all the arts I tend to love theme-and-variation. As my collection of editing apps has grown along with my skills, I’ve explored a number of different themes repeatedly. My photo “Ernestine Took Her Greatest Secret to the Grave” comes from a recent series I did based on public domain 19th Century portraits, mostly from the Library of Congress: tintypes and daguerreotypes and so on. It’s the first time I’ve tried creating my own images using photos I didn’t shoot myself; so it was exciting to see if I could make them my own. It’s not for me to judge the quality of the results (12 pics posted last week on Instagram), but I will say a couple things about this image, with the usual disclaimer that I work fairly improvisationally, and often only figure out what I want a photo to “say” in the process of fooling around with various apps and approaches.
The haunting thing about portrait photography in particular is that there is always a mystery involved. Often, even when viewing of snapshot of myself at a younger age, I find myself wondering “who was that person?” The past is past, and much remains unknown and irretrievable. In the case of the 19th century portraits I was looking at, even when we have a name for the person photographed, we often have no story. Yet the faces have such presence, such vitality. The woman I am arbitrarily calling Ernestine is vivid and beautiful to me, but if I want to know anything more, I will have to supply her story myself. Part of me wants to, while part of me wants to respect her privacy and whatever mysteries she took–as we all do, I suppose–with her to the grave. I imagine the repeated partial faces behind her (achieved with Decim8 and a number of other apps) all have different versions of the story to tell. Rising from this welter of broken selves Ernestine emerges whole, in the center of it all, with no comment on anything. Here and gone, as we all will be in time, gone into the wild blue yonder.
Please take some time and visit this incredible artist at @doctorjazz on Instagram
by Rebecca Cornwell | Aug 26, 2012 | Showcases, Sunday Blues Edit
I’ve followed Lynne, @playtime11, on Instagram almost for as long I can remember. Her photos of a far away land intrigued me. Tasmania seemed as exotic as a place as I could imagine. I loved seeing pictures of where she was and her family and the increasingly her edits. Experiments maybe, but beautifully conceived edits with a true artist’s eye. Last week as I looked through the tag, I felt completely jumbled. I don’t think it was the images but where I felt myself. At some point my eyes rested upon this image of Lynne’s and I was transported. Transported away from chaos and into the cool misty land where she lives. It was quiet and calm and I chose to rest there for a long time. Take some time with this image and rest. I promise you will leave it with a greater peace. Happy Sunday.
Lynne: Tasmanian aboriginal friend of mine once told me that in aboriginal ‘folklore’ Tasmania holds a similar place in the imagination of Australian Aboriginals as did ‘Avalon’ to the Celts. To this day I am not sure of the validity of this story as my friend has a mischievous glint in her eye and is a wonderful teller of stories. But I retell it, as this image was taken on a magical misty day in the Tasmanian highlands at a place called Dove Lake, a place where my friend spent much of her childhood with her grandfather, and this is her country.
I used Hipstamatic #blankofreedom13 film and #loftus lens as this combination I believe produces the closest to the ‘true’ colours of all the Hipstamatic combinations. The Loftus lens withs its blurry edge helped to accentuate the magic of the mist. All I did was point and shoot, the edit was just a matter of cropping the small colour strip from the bottom right, such was the mood of the day.
Photography has always been an interest, but I had never really spent much time ‘doing’ it until I discovered IG and Hipstamatic.
I am a biologist / ecologist by trade and prior to owning an iPhone most of my photographs were landscapes or wildlife shots taken on slide and print film, I realised getting a good shot wasn’t easy. I wanted to know how ‘good’ photographers capture light and how they produced high contrast black and white, because I definitely couldn’t do it. I didn’t ever get round to learning.
Skip forward many years till about a year ago, I was home with a baby, and I bought an iPhone. I would take it with me when walking, snap shots and was instantly addicted. For me the iPhone is a fantastic creative toy. It’s beauty is you have it with you all the time, and there are all those apps to play with. My favourite for shooting is Hipstamatic the combinations are myriad, but the trick is to choose the right one for the conditions. I think this appeals to the scientist in me. I am not a ‘photographer’ just someone having fun, I look at all the great work on IG and other platforms and am so inspired. It’s like having your own private art gallery that you can carry around. I am easily distracted by the technology, and find it difficult to stick to any artistic style.
I am a beginner and am just learning photographic and editing skills, so the content or subject of my images is secondary, whereas with many of the iPhone artists whose work I have grown to love I believe they have mastered the skills to allow the content and subject to be the most important factor and that is what makes their work so fascinating.
You can see more of Lynne’s incredible images both edited and not at @playtime11 on Instagram
by Rebecca Cornwell | Aug 19, 2012 | Showcases, Sunday Blues Edit
Some artists have a style, a signature to their work that is undeniable their own. When I see Skip’s images grouped in with other artists, I always know that it is one of his. Beautifully complex, they command you to look deeply to figure out how these works came from a photograph. Where is the tree? Or the Building? Or something I can recognize? I know it’s in there. I am fascinated by the Decim8 app. There are a handful of artists whose use of the app is completely unique. Skip @skip_jones is one of those. Using photographic images from his surroundings, Skip weaves each into a completely transformed abstraction. Always a thing of complete beauty, with rich colors and complex pattern, his photographs become works of art. I chose this image from last weeks tag because I couldn’t not choose it. Look deeply, maybe you will see the original puddle with algae.
Skip:
As a painter, I would use photos as source material.
I studied artists like David Salle and Gerhard Richter. People who were using classic technique, juxtaposed with modern narratives in their large-scale painting.
Photos provide perfect records of light over forms and the shadows that described depth. Basing an under-painting on photos improved my draftsmanship and lent physicality to my work.
Then, after using Hipstamatic for the first time, seeing the dirty saturation, I realized paintings seemed contrived.
I wanted to create the source.
Now, I crave the immediacy of editing while sitting in the shadows of a building I’ve just photographed.
I appreciate the authenticity of mobile photography, the photo journalistic element in capturing your world and posting the evidence.
You can see all of Skip’s magic on Instagram @skip_jones
