Tried and True :: iPhone Apps I am "hearting"

Happy Valentine's day!!!  

Today I bring you tidings of love in the form of iPhone apps that I have come to both know AND looooooove. Basically, here's some reviews of apps that I have been using almost daily. Hope you are having a great day and this is useful to you...

Aviary  

[ Photo Editing ]

Not really sure how I stumbled upon this one but I have had it for about a month now and it is AWESOME. While I have quite a few digital cameras that I could use to photograph things for this blog, I have become quote lazy and relied almost solely on the one that I have on my iPhone. (It's actually not a bad camera in all honesty.) That being said? There is always the issue of the fact that even though my iPhone has a decent enough camera, there is usually always something I want to do to tweak the image before I post it here for you all. Enter the Aviary app!!! 

It is free but if you want to purchase the plug-in extras it's not that expensive and the return on your small investment is huge from what I have estimated so far. For the record, I don't use the plug-ins and it's been enough for me to do things like adjust sharpness, bump contrast, saturate/desaturate colors, etc. etc. It's pretty user friendly and intuitive with it's interface/navigation design and I can even do things like take pictures during school and then edit them while I sit in a steamy bathtub (TMI? Sorry...) at the end of the day when I otherwise would be relaxing. (Seriously? Editing pictures can be relaxing for me sometimes. It's no wonder that I am stressed though, right? Understatement of the decade. *sigh*) Anyway, try out Aviary! It's worth the download and you might find yourself ditching out on you other cameras for your phone camera like I have been doing.

InstaQuote 

[ Fanciful way to quote things ]

I used to be a little bit of non-participator of the whole business of posting word art/typography on my instagram stream - and I was even slightly annoyed when I came across the like - but I have since changed my mind about it all because I have found an typography app that actually employs great design as much as the app just IS well design. It's called InstaQuote and it, too, is F-R-E-E!!!

Here are two samples of what I have already done with it...

 You can see that the templates really do offer some very beautiful design just as they are because all I did was enter in the text I wanted and then tweak the scale, color, justification, and emphasis as I felt was necessary. It's not that often that I have to do anything more than just use what is ready-made and that's one of my favorite things about InstaQuote that has convinced me not to be a "hater" of text/quote as image sharing.

Instagram

[ Social Networking ]

 Next up is the social media conduit that is Instagram!!!! Now, to be fair, I have professed my love of instagram plenty that I feel like it shouldn't even be included on this list because my "love affair" with it goes far beyond just me loving it - let's be honest it borders obsession - but still, I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway. I have recently made some very significant connections by way of Instagram alone (and I will expand upon this soon enough because it is SO cool!!!) and I am such a huge fan of this social network that I have abandoned by Facebook and Twitter because this does so much more of what I feel like social networking SHOULD do. And again? It's FREE!!!!

It has got some awesome very simple photo editing/filtering capacity within the app itself and unless the automatic square cropping bothers you? Well... try and just get past that. (Seriously.) All sorts of self-publishing businesses have stared aligning themselves with Instagram and so you can now get your snaps published in bound books, stretched onto canvases for the purposes of wall art, and even printed onto device cases!!! So... YEAH. Instagram is awesome in so many ways and if you want to connect by way of it's power, my username is DreamPrayCreate.

How I spent my weekend

Spent the better part of my weekend looking like this... 

Because I was spending time here watching life through the lens doing things like this...

For my last wedding of this calendar year, I am mostly OK with how everything went. The lot of the previous statement is something I will be discussing soon enough after some serious prayer and meditation.

I'll just say this much: I am feeling a bit like I am in the midst of a career crisis.

A whole gaggle of things are weighing on me lately that I have always had to deal with but are finally becoming so heavy that I am realizing that I am very much going to have to make some drastic changes.

*sigh*

I am seriously and truly resting in the shelter and wisdom of Philippans 4:13 today.

The evolution of a self-portrait

Today I am home sick because of a surprise case of pink eye. *grrrrrrrrr* -_-

My battle with pink seems to be never-ending and I cannot stand it for all types of reasons that I don't even care to go into right now because it will only make me mad.

Anyway, today I am doing my best to just try not to itch or touch my eyes in any way as well as catch up and finish some projects that are time sensitive. One of those projects? Clean up and organize my hard drives. *pfffffffttttttt*

Something kind of amusing that I have come across in this process is a very small collective of self-portraits I've used on the web since 2001 to represent my visual likeness.  Mostly they have been featured on my bio page of my photography site.  The very first one I ever used (that I would have liked to include) is no where to be found. Probably better that it happened that way since it was the ultimate of fauxtography mistakes all culminating in one piece.  It was duo-toned, vignetted with white, had a softened focus, etc. etc. etc. What can I say? I was learning and still am learning. Anyway.

Below are the only three images that I have used for bio pic purposes. As it happens, I do my best staying behind the camera and lens if ever I can help. I don't know. I just don't much like being photographed. Still? I know that photographs of individuals are important. And so? I present to you three images that I have used in the past in order to represent myself...

This one I took in the mirror before everyone was doing it for social networking purposes  right before I went to shoot one of my first weddings as a second shooter. It was taken somewhere between 2002 and 2005. That's a long amount of time but honestly? I don't remember when it was taken. 

Another mirror self-portrait. There's my trusty camera on my trusty bracket system that I accidentally broke at that very wedding I was shooting. #facepalm  Luckily, I always make friends with all of the vendors and service folks wherever I am shooting and one of the maintenance guys at the country club where this wedding was came to my rescue and jerry-rigged my bracket in a way that permanently affixed my dedicated flash on its mount with the cord but whatever. It was a good solid fix that is still actually like that even today - though I don't use my bracket anymore.

And here is my current bio self-portrait. I know, I know... another mirror shot.  Perhaps I am ridiculously obsessed with having control over the camera but as it stands? If I have to be photographed, I prefer to be the one to do it. I guess that's the reason for all of my pictures being mirror shots. Anyway, I took this one a little more than a year ago and I feel like it's still as reasonably representational as a self-portraits could be. I'm growing my hair out so I'm hoping by next Fall I will be ready to do the next mirror shot to update things. Who knows.

So, that's kind of interesting. At least, to me.

I should probably get myself in a decent state to go to the doctor's office and get this pink eye issue worked out. Hope you all in the blogosphere are doing well and have a terrific weekend doing all that you do.

Hot off the presses!

When I'm not posting things here, it's sometimes because I'm posting things elsewhere. I write for the Fuel Brand network's photography division. My aim with my articles has been to instruct photographers how to use elements of art and design within the photographic medium. So many photographers out there (nowadays) are self-taught (and I don't begrudge a nontraditional start of a career in the least) but could have much stronger bodies of work if they considered how essential classic art teachings are for visual art itself.

I've already published articles addressing using visual texture to make photographs feel more dimensional and also touched on color theory and some of the ways that it can visually balance an image.  This month's article highlights the importance of visual branding and how it can be done effectively with typography.

Lesson idea: Levitation Photography - Digital

As promised, here are the student pieces from the Levitation photography project. This project came from the fact that the students wanted to do more photography specific assignments as well as from my own goals of scaffolding photoshop skills and keeping up with trends in photoshop "tricks."

The students had no formal tutorial that they were following for this project and the rendering process they used was informed by both previous experience/tutorials as well as their own understanding of how photoshop works. I urged them to approach this project such that their images yielded a surreal feel to it and we looked at samples of both levitation photoshopped images as well as surreal artwork. Each piece was evaluated not only for seamless rendering but also use of color, placement of lighting and shadows, and of course creativity. I offered them in class time as well as photography assistance for getting their pictures taken since it's always an advantage for this type of work to have greater manual controls over the functions of the camera when you are taking the picture so as to yield the most accurate exposure and shadows. You can always add those things in photoshop but getting it right in the camera will always be better.

Overall the students did very well. Some of them attempted to create very surrealistic type depictions while still maintaining the natural backgrounds while others completely conceptualized fictitious environments for them to be levitating within.

Lesson idea: Photograph to Painting - Digital

This lesson idea is for the Graphic Design course I instruct and originates from a tutorial found in The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book by Linnea Dayton and Cristan Gillespie. This is the second year I have used this book and it really works well for this class. It provides well-thought out and well written/instructed lessons that really addresses some of the "cool" things that can be done in/with Photoshop and also provides as a great reference item for just about any question or issue the students have had. The class I instruct is beginner with regard to Photoshop experience but intermediate-advanced with regard to visual art understanding and ability. I have a number of tutorials I have adapted as well as authored (based on my own self-taught abilities) and I use those to supplement the book in order to address the unique needs I've encountered in the classroom. I did a good amount of research before deciding on the book but it has really served as a great text to base the class upon. It also serves as a wonderful spring of resources for project ideas in the digital medium.

I run the Graphic Design/Photoshop curriculum/classes like this:

1. I give them a tutorial (either from the book or something I've adapted to best suit their needs) that will take about a week to complete.
2. The students take the following week to do a personal piece using the skills they attained from the tutorial experience. Usually there are some parameters but they are given a lot of creative liberties for the most part. 

Doing things in the manner of the aforementioned really allows for the students to both learn skills/understanding of Photoshop as well as gives them a well timed opportunity to apply them. Each lesson/project also builds upon itself to scaffold more advanced skills/projects.

This project/lesson idea utilized the tutorial found on p. 395 of the text called "Wet on Wet" Acrylics. It took a photographic image and digitally rendered it with effects to make it look like it was hand painted in our traditional art studio class. It was fun as much as it was a great learning experience for the students since it called upon previous experience in the traditional studio in order for their digital brushstrokes to be more realistically rendered. It was a bit challenging for them (at first) because they couldn't wrap their minds around the notion that the platform of Photoshop offers a virtually (no pun intended) unlimited supply of any kind or size brush that they could imagine or have been able to actually work with but eventually many of them "got it." They were given the option to use their own photographs as well as stock images. I strongly encouraged them to use images of animals or landscapes over people since the digital rendering into fine art painting ultimately results in an impressionistic art effect and therefore makes fine detail work very challenging to showcase.

Here are some of the best pieces of student work that I picked from three classes total starting with animal subject matter...

Here are some of the landscape pieces:

I am beside myself with the strides that some of the students have made! The lot of them are very talented in the visual arts aside from the classes they have taken with me/during their time here at school but aside from that, I know each of these students very well and I will tell you that they are all making tremendous progress with their abilities and skillsets.

Series: Negatives of Positives

Other than being a high school art teacher, I'm also a professional photographer (here and here).  The market is flooded these days with all kinds prosumer-type photographers but I've been using the photographic medium for nearly ten years now to create pictures.  That means I've been in the business way back before digital photography was so affordable and film was king.

Over Thanksgiving break last week, I dove head first into photography work with portrait jobs and also my own endeavors and I got to thinking about how the photographic medium isn't the same without the use of actual film.  Granted, it's nice to have the instant gratification of the pictures popping up immediately on your camera's LCD but overall? It really lacks a certain something in wait time of actually getting rolls of film developed.  And because I'm such a "geek" of things of yesteryear, I got the harebrained idea to take some of my favorite digital shots and transform them into the filmstrips that they might have been long ago.

Here's what I came up with...

I created the above using digital images of my favorite positive moments and memories (hence the name of the series - Negatives of Positives) but then I transformed them to appear as negative strips using both photography and photoshop skills.  The images above are supposed to appear as if they are being illuminated on a lightbox/light table.  I took some creative license and tweaked some of the ways the colors showed up but overall I'm really pleased with how they came out and I will definitely do some more of these and include them all in my portfolio.