Tag Archives: Instagram

Selected for Photo of the Day on AMPt

The AMPt (the Advanced Mobile Photography team) selected my photo, Standing the Tests of Time,  for Photo of the Day last week and featured it on their home page. I am honored! Here’s a screenshot of the week’s Photos of the Day as posted on Instagram.

AMPT Photos of the Day for December 23 through 31

AMPT Photos of the Day for December 23 through 31

So which one is it? It’s in the upper right corner in the image above. Here it is also below:

Standing the Tests of Time by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Standing the Tests of Time by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Yes, you guessed right. This is the same image that was in this post: The Beauty of Different.

The AMPt community is celebrating its one year anniversary today. Head on over to the Advanced Mobile Photography team website to find out more about them.  And have a fantastic first day of the new year!

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A Zentangled Journey

Checking out the social streams of my amazing classmates in Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection 6 week e-course, i found some impressive drawings by @artbreaking on Instagram.

A little later that same day, lingering at Michael’s a nudge too long, Kass Hall’s book Zentangle Untangled leapt out at me from the rack. It was similar to @artbreaking’s work in spirit. Three oscillations later I decide. I buy it. I read it all in one sitting that night. The next day I try it out.  My first zentangle:

The Wise: GateKeeper & Guide by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

The Wise Owl: GateKeeper & Guide by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

Cabin Floor is the name of this receding pattern. Next I tried combining a zentangle with a stamp using the pattern Five-Oh created by none other than Kass Hall:

Dive In © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

Dive In © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

Then, the App Whisperer, Joanne Carter published an interview of Davide Capponi, I discovered through his work a vector drawing app called DecoSketch. (He uses the app to great effect. His blog, Rubicorno, is fantastic.) So I tried the it out:

Solar Plexus © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

Solar Plexus © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

DecoSketch comes with a number of “brushes” which draw pre-set patterns similar to the idea of pre-set patterns in Zentangles. In the above image, I followed the feeling of play. DecoSketch draws on a clean canvas or on an imported photo or image. Naturally, my next step was to try the app on an image.

Force Fields © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

Force Fields © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

I edited this image first in Snapseed, then in PhotoCopier before working on it in DecoSketch. I experimented with many patterns to find a pattern, placement, size, and directionality that I hope actually adds meaning to the photograph. Here’s the image before I added the patterns.

Force Field © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

Force Field © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson 2013

This tangled free-form journey pattern that started with Brené Brown’s Gifts of Imperfection’s e-course and ends, temporarily, at DecoSketch is simply amazing to me.  Following the wish to learn, grow and “play” set the lines of the pattern that I moved along.

What sets your pattern?

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Photo Essay with Diptic

Photo essays are usually a series of pictures related by a theme or a place or a subject. I’ve experimented with collapsing the series into a collage.

There are many tools that you can use for this. Fuzel Pro, Frametastic and Diptic are all great for this.  For my purposes, I’ve used Diptic for a while. After looking at the other options, I decided to continue.

The series I am working on is about the mixed use of land in an area where I often go running. Here’s one experiment  to express that in a collage:

High Voltage © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

High Voltage © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

Diptic has a handy filter feature which allows you to make each photo in the collage have the same color cast and I used it to make sure these black and white’s all looked the same. This version doesn’t support the point because both the subject and the form are so consistent.

Here’s a different version:

Mixed Use 1 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

Mixed Use 1 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

A third attempt from a painterly point of view:

Mixed Use 2 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

Mixed Use 2 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

And lastly, a more straight forward version:

Mixed Use 3 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

Mixed Use 3 © Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

In each photo, there’s some man-made structure in the midst of the landscape. Each structure indicates a different use.

As you look at these 4 different photo essays in the form of the collage…

 

 

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Experiments in Mobile Photography

Ridge Winery by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Ridge Vineyards by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

My husband and I went to Ridge Vineyards last weekend to celebrate his birthday and enjoy the last days of summer. We found an open picnic table under an umbrella on top of the mountain and from this vantage point we looked over all the San Francisco Bay area. It was a wonderful mini-vacation.

A lone olive tree at the crest of one hill attached the ground to the sky through its roots, truck and canopy. The image proved a fertile jumping off point for a variety of experiments.

Passport to Another Place by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Passport to Another Place, Ridge Vineyards by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Passport to Another Place helps show the transporting power of space and quiet. I used apps Etchings and DistressedFX.

Dream by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Dream, Ridge Vineyards by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

For Dreams, I used apps Retromatic and Instagram to take the image in a new direction that’s a bit more design oriented.

A Surreal Place, Ridge Winery, by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

A Surreal Place, Ridge Vineyards, by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

In A Surreal Place, I used Repix and Snapseed to add a layer that looks like the scenery, water stains on a photo and pixelation.

A Digital World, Ridge Winery by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

The Digital World, Ridge Vineyards by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

The app Decim8 helped me introduce an allusion to The Digital World in the Silicon Valley below. Ridge is much more tranquil than this but it is in part made possible by the high-tech valley success.

Grapes by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Grapes and Earth, Ridge Vineyards by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Lastly, by combining apps Etchings, Moku Hanga, a Japanese woodblock printing app by JixiPix and Instagram , I created this softer look with a cool grape and warm earth contrast, hence Grapes and Earth.

It’s amazing how one scene gives so many ways of exploring what the time meant, what the place looked like and what it represented. A few hours of fun on a mountaintop translated into a few hours fun on an iPad editing a photo. Not a bad payoff.

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Messing with Mextures

Several artists whose work I’ve admired have listed the app Mextures in their mix list. I decided to give it a try today:

Meetup at the Palo Alto Airport by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Meetup at the Palo Alto Airport by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Mextures is pretty useful. It allows you to stack and mix different textures such as grunge and light leaks each on a separate layer and to rearrange those layers. It also allows you to save a recipe of stacked textures so that you can apply it over and over on a body of work.

Tiny airplanes seem quaint in these days of frequent intercontinental travel. A sherbert overlay felt just right. But this is not just one texture layer but 5 different texture layers finished off with some buffing and polishing in Snapseed.

I love the layered painterly feel that this app enables me to make. I’ll definitely use it again.

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IgersEastBay, Trey Ratcliff, and Google Glass on a Photowalk in San Francisco

I just returned from a Glass Photowalk in San Francisco organized by IGersEastBay (Instagrammers East Bay) in conjunction with Trey Ratcliff of HDR fame and Thomas Hawk. Wow. What a turnout. Over 1,000 people RSVP’d and hundreds attended.

If you showed up, and were over 18 and a resident of the US you could register to win a pair of Google Glass. Several people were wearing a pair. It was my first exposure beyond the occasional restaurant siting to an atmosphere of Glass.

It was odd to see someone look up at the right top corner of their glasses and press the glasses temple to take a picture. A bit like talking with you while reading mail on my phone. Some people wore masks, ranging from animal heads to Darth Vader, possibly to avoid overexposure. Many fewer women than men had a pair. While this technology is not pervasive yet, it’s easy to see how it will change our ability to feel unrecorded or anonymous. It doesn’t take much Glass to perturb the atmosphere.

I didn’t stick around for the drawing, thus remaining in the ranks of the un-Glassed. However, I did have a fantastic time editing photos on the train ride home. Despite the press of hundreds of other photographers, leaping with our characteristic abandon into unseemly as well as athletic poses to capture what must not be allowed to get away, I was able to isolate a few quiet moments.

Hotel Pickwick by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Hotel Pickwick by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013 (App List: Camera+, Perfectly Clear, Snapseed, DistressedFX, Laminar, Impressions and Blender)

There was something about the Hotel Pickwick font that shouted, “I’m from long ago.” in a winsome manner.

The City as Backdrop by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

The City as Backdrop by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

I saw this wall first with no people walking by. It was a scrim for the shadows of the larger city and a perfect backdrop for human drama, such as this small woman, making her way through the city.

Man in the Play by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

Man in the Play by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

This man seems trapped by the shadows of unseen architecture, eddied up under the lamppost on his way through the city.

Going to the IgersEastBay GlassPhotowalk with Thomas Hawk and Trey Ratcliff was a wise use of time for 2 reasons. It gave me exposure to the impact of Google Glass technology on how people interact in groups as well as the opportunity to make a few new images.

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Monetizing Mobile Photography: Some Assembly Required

How do you monetize mobile photography?
L to R: Tim Young, Adrian Salamunovic, Brian Difeo, Kirsten Alana by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

“Getting Paid” panelists L to R: Tim Young, Adrian Salamunovic, Larry Closs, Brian Difeo, Kirsten Alana by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson

The difficulty in monetizing mobile photography is causing anxiety and frustration for many photographers. During Social Media Week in New York City, the 1197 Conference at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art tackled the subject head on in a panel called “Getting Paid”. Each panelist had built a unique path to a working business model:
  • Kirsten Alana is a travel diariest/blogger and teaches
  • Larry Closs is the founder and editor of TrekWorld, a travel and trekking magazine, a Director of Communications for a non-profit, Next Generation Nepal and author of the book Beatitude
  • Brian Difeo is the co-founder of The Mobile Media Lab, “a marketing agency for Instagram” and founder of Instagram NYC
  • Adrian Salamunovic is the co-founder of CanvasPop the leader for mobile photography printing on canvas
  • Tim Young is an illustrator and digital art director with 20+ years of experience
The stories of how a paid gig actually happens are almost brownian motion except with direction so it’s no longer brownian but perhaps vector motion. The place each person holds (in a social network, in an organization) serves as matrix of relationships that form a platform for broader reach.
Larry Closs’s photographs of Nepal (presumably taken while on trips with or for Next Generation Nepal) have been used by CNN, The Huffington Post etc. Brian travelled on a paid trip to the Middle East to photograph for a brand because his talents were known through connections at The Mobile Media Lab and Instagram NYC. Other stories were similar.
This motion variant closely parallels the top 3 actions that Saul Kaplan recommends for innovators in The Business Model Innovation Factory: How to Stay Relevant When the World is Changing (A shout out to Kathryn Welds for this concise summary):
  1. Do more stuff
  2. Use a different lens 
  3. Enable random collisions of unusual suspects
Panelists throughout the day agreed that there was no one path. Advice to those looking to find their way included:
  1. Be social. Spend time commenting and liking.  If you’re not social, nothing else you do will matter. Kirsten Alana
  2. Find out what’s unique about you. Brian Difeo
  3. The key to monetization is to solve someone’s problem. It’s all about them and it’s up to you to get that across. Jen Pollock Bianco, multimedia travel diarist, My Life’s a Trip
  4. It’s the web you spin that really counts, not the authoritative channels.
  5. Contact galleries, don’t be afraid to teach, make your own opportunities. Marty Yawnick, creator of LifeinLoFi and creative director of Type A Design.

While the tremendous difficulty in monetizing mobile photography is frustrating for many photographers, the good news is that change is more likely in times of high volatility. And the clarion call for change in photography business models is here. Indicator comments from the conference include:

  1. “The way photographers are paid is changing. Maybe we need to rethink what compensation means for photography.” Jamie Goldenberg, photo editor at Bloomberg Businessweek magazine AND freelance editorial photographer
  2. “Stock is dead.” Noah Rabinowitz, Art Editor with Guernica, portraiture and reportage commissions
  3. Someone in the audience gave a stunning example of having his stock revenue plummet from $5k per month to $50 for the same volume of production.

In the midst of all this disruption, if you photograph, you have to make your peace, one way or another with the current circumstances and your ability to change them or cope with them. The most resonant meta conversation I had about this topic was with Tim Young.  At some point during a substantive commercial career Tim came to the personal decision that it’s about the relationships and nurturing those relationships.

This point of view is akin to what Lewis Hyde describes in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Nurturing relationships through the powerful gifts of support, connection, commenting, liking etc creates social bonds.  The dominant form of exchange is one of affection creating a matrix of relationships. This is in stark contrast to a commercial exchange or money-based transactions which discharge all obligations leaving both parties free of the need to interact further.

How to monetize mobile photography is a conversation that won’t stop until some new equilibrium is found. The prospects for change are the greatest now because of the size of disruption. In the meantime, practice your gift not only of photography but also of support and connection with those “unusual suspects” in your network

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