A Picture’s Worth… With Lene Basma
Welcome to another new section to theappwhisperer.com, this new section is entitled ‘A Picture’s Worth…’ and it is a subsection of our Photo App Lounge column.
A Picture’s Worth… is where we ask iPhone photographers that have taken or made, as the case may be, powerful iPhone art to explain the processes they took. This includes their initial thoughts as to what they wanted to create, why they wanted to create it, how they created it, including all apps used and what they wanted to convey. We also ask these incredible artists to explain their emotions and how the image projects those feelings.
This is another totally unique section to theappwhisperer.com and one that offers the unique facility for the reader/viewer to find out more about an image and also for the artist to explain the complete process and message.
This is our second post to this new section, we previously published A Picture’s Worth by Roger Guetta, see here. We also previously interview Lene Basa in our A Day In The Life Series, if you missed that, you can read it here.
In this A Picture’s Worth … today, Lene talks us through her incredible image ‘At least Have My Red Shoes’, shown below.
(If you would like to contribute to this section or if you have seen an image that you would like to learn more about, just email [email protected] and we will get it all set up).
The Birth Of A Concept
Copyright Image – Lene Basma – ‘At Least I Have My Red Shoes’
JC – Lene, I would like you to explain your emotions and feelings before, during and after the process and what the final image means to you and how you intend it to be interpreted by others.
OK, so when I am writing this, I just read the first installment of this series, written or rather performed, by the fabulous Roger Guetta – which sort of leaves me, well I am not quite sure where it leaves me. I guess all I can do is attend to business and try to explain what I thought and felt when making the image “At Least I Have My Red Shoes”.
What stirred me into making this image? The simple fact that I finally ventured into the costume shop at the local mall and dared to take a candid shot of a fantastic red carnival masque. I just wanted to make something with it, really. Even though my images are often grounded in a feeling or a thought, this time it was just this beautiful masque and my wish to try to see if I could do something interesting with it…
The Process
I started out with masking out the masque (no pun intended) in PhotoForge2, saving the end result – a white picture that only had the masque in it-, to the camera roll. I then opened it in image Blender and started to look for images that could make this masque “mine”.
First I layered it with a self portrait I did some weeks ago – I layered several times with different blending modes until I had the effect I wanted. The image was still white, which made it look unfinished, so I continued to blend in some texture images I have taken, and took the image to ScratchCam to grunge it up. There still wasn´t enough of a “story” there, and I wondered where to take it, as the title suddenly came to me, and then it was clear.
I opened Blender again adding the red shoes, and a body. The image still seemed to straight forward for me – if you know my other images I am a fan of quirkiness, ambiguity and surrealism, so I used Diptic to add a black stripe and shifted the two parts of the images slightly.
Lastly I took it into Blender again adding part of a machine and some rocks. And it was not quite an Eureka moment, but then I thought I just couldn´t do anything more. I had to let it go.
Afterthoughts
Which leaves me to the third part of the question, how I want people to react or how I feel about the image now afterwards. Honestly, this isn´t one of my favorite images of mine. Why? I am not quite sure, but perhaps because I didn´t start out the process as I usually do, with something I need to figure out or express. As far as all you other people go. I hope you like it, the best thing that can happen to me is if it can inspire someone else.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
2 Comments
Janine Graf
I found this very inspiring!
Kim Martino
Great image, & great style of writing, too, Lene!