Karen Messick – Extension of the I – Interview – A Highly Creative And Talented Mobile Photographer

© Karen Messick

© Karen Messick – “Arizona Train” – Apps Used: ClassicPan and Iris Photo Suite

Joanne – How did you get started in photography?

Karen – While traveling on vacations I carried a point and shoot Nikon One Touch circa 1985 now considered Vintage, and came home with pictures my friends and co-workers admired; they often asked – What kind of camera are you using?- So I thought maybe I had some talent for composition, because the camera was doing everything else. My first SLR was the Nikon N90s in 1995, and that’s when I became serious about photography.

© Karen Messick – “Beach Amusement Park” – Apps Used: 6×7, AutoPainter 2, Iris Photo Suite, LensLight and Image Blender

Joanne – Who and what are your influences?

Karen – Influences bombard me daily when I look at other photographer and artist’s work. I analyze their shot or composition, the composite or the abstract and take away what I like, much like visiting a Museum and walking through the corridors and rooms of artist’s work over the course of art history from renaissance to modern art. I like to study paintings for the way painters handle and represent light in their images. Contemporary photographers that have influenced me by their work are Freeman Patterson and Tony Sweet. iPhone artists that continue to inspire me are Roger Guetta, Karen Divine and Rudy Vogel – just to name a few among others of extreme iPhone art talent who share their work daily on FB sites and the web.

© Karen Messick – “Beach Bench Person” – Apps Used: Hipstamatic, PhotoArtista, Sketch, AutoPainter and Image Blender (The person on the bench was added from another image)

Joanne – What draws you to the subjects you seek?

Karen – I prefer to think of it as subjects who seek me;.I tend to put myself in a place and let the subjects speak to me, whether it’s a simple chair in a corner or a plant on a window sill, a beautiful beach scene or a dilapidated building. I like to travel to places and see what I see. Listen to my surroundings, observe and let the pictures come to me.

© Karen Messick – “Beach Dew Tour 1” – Apps Used: Camera+, Noir and Snapseed

Joanne – What is it about these subjects that you want to capture/communicate and ultimately convey in your images?

Karen – Often, I try to understand that question myself – I sometimes reflect on the subjects I capture to find a rhythm in my work, a continuity, a direction but my style and subjects are so varied as is life that I have a hard time drilling down to a purpose of communication. I think it is really just a sharing of what I find beautiful, fun or interesting in the world, be it an artfully arranged interior in a museum, an antique light hanging from a stark white kitchen ceiling in an historic building, or people in their environment, but always there is an element of interest, to me in the light; the ultimate medium of the art of photography.

© Karen Messick – “Beach Dew Tour 2” – Apps Used: Camera+, Kyoobik Photo and Image Blender

Joanne – How did you settle on this subject?

Karen – Well, I appreciate beauty – That is, beauty as my eyes see it, found in all aspects of life in the world; in color, shape, form and light and all the ever changing aspects of light, subjects and people, as I move about the world in my life. Pictures and beauty are everywhere to me!

© Karen Messick – “Beach Fries and Chicken” – Apps Used: ClassicPan, AutoPainter 2 and Perfect Photo

Joanne – Is there another are/subject that you would like to explore, if so, what and why?

Karen – I would love to photograph under the sea.

© Karen Messick – “Beach Seagull Flight” – Apps Used: Hipstamatic, LensLight, Image Blender and Perfect Photo

Joanne – Which photographers (not necessarily mobile photographers) do you most admire and why?

Karen – The traditional photographers that I admire most are:

DeWitt Jones ~ I have admired his work for a very long time. When I started in Nature Photography his articles in Outdoor Photographer Magazine were inspirational. His message today behind his images resonates with me, Celebrate What’s Right With the World; I see his work as a true reflection of beauty in the world.

Tony Sweet is another photographer I admire for his creative vision in his work always pushing new boundaries and trying new processes from his extreme use of panoramas to multiple exposure techniques and his creative iPhone work.

Ian Plant for his absolutely perfect breathtaking images of the earth he discovers. But there are many, many more and the list is long and many lesser-known photographers I admire their work everyday.

© Karen Messick – “Cromwell Valley Barn” – Apps Used: Hipstamatic

Joanne – Henri Cartier-Bresson is in many ways, the Godfather of street photography, even in the 1930’s he enjoyed using a small camera for discretion in order to capture people and tell a story; do you feel this way regarding mobile photography?

Karen – Yes, I do. The mobile phone adds a substantial degree of discretion. I can point my iPhone at a subject and they might just think I am looking at a text or reading an e-mail.

© Karen Messick – “Cromwell Valley Hose” – Apps Used: Hipstamatic

Joanne – Tell us about your photographic technique – do you rely on intuition or do you believe in a more formal/trained approach?

Karen – My work is a blend of technique, learned and intuition, adding in the stuff I am made of over time, my past experiences and influences.

My photographic technique has its roots in the love of art painting; especially the Impressionists, but I love all types of paintings. In my early childhood years I would draw and loved art classes of all kinds from pottery to paint. My parents loved gardening and were always exclaiming the beauty of a rose and it’s delicate scent, or pointing out to me the details of subtle color and shape in the ruffle of the trumpet in a daffodil. When bloom time was peak they were always cutting beautiful bouquets of fresh garden flowers for the house. They were truly nature’s art. This is where my appreciation for things beautiful came to be.

My technique’s have been learned, I believe you need to learn how to use the tool from a technical aspect, before you can create with it, so understanding light, exposure, depth of field, shutter speed is essential to my work. Studying the guidelines of composition has also enhanced my work.

© Karen Messick – “Fells Point Lock” – Apps Used: Camera+, PhotoWizard and Perfect Photo

Joanne – How has your photography evolved?

Karen – When I first started shooting, my images were small 4 x 6 paper prints from my point and shoot Nikon from vacations. Then I decided I enjoyed the act of photographing and bought an SLR camera where I then began shooting straight nature images on slide film: learning techniques, depth of field exposure, shutter speed, metering etc. The final image was the SLIDE.

When digital photography arrived on the scene with all the potential of software image processing it opened up a whole new world of image creation. The image capture then became the medium for what was to come, in processing. At that point I had a good solid foundation of technique, now it was all about vision. I often find myself saying now: here’s an image, now what can be done to enhance it?; Now creativity is unwrapped! The apps on the iPhone are incredible and offer the creative artist, the innovative photographer and some blend of both to flourish with a new medium of digital art files.

© Karen Messick – “Fells Point Pano” – Apps Used: BracketMode, AutoStitch, PhotoForge and Perfect Photo

Joanne – Many of the great photographers, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Frank , Henri Cartier-Bresson described only shooting images for themselves; do you see this attitude with mobile photographers?

Karen – Like most artists, I think artists make art to make art! They do it because it is what they do, the same reason a sailor sails! A writer writes: They love it!

Not necessarily because of any external motive of fame or fortune, we all know that would be misguided.

© Karen Messick – “Hampton Mansion Chair” – Apps Used: Glaze, Image Blender and FlyPaper texture

Joanne – Do you take risks with photographs, push boundaries? If yes, please give examples, if no, why not, would you like to?

Karen – I will try almost anything with a photograph..textures, distortion, layers whatever my minds eye has an idea might work with an image. I am not so much a digital collage artist but I do blend different images together to arrive at a final image. I will even create complete abstracts out of mobile images, spurred on and inspired by the many creative abstract works I have seen by mobile artists.

© Karen Messick – “Hampton Mansion Paper Whites” – Apps Used: Camera+, Glaze, Image Blender and Flypaper texture

Joanne – What is your favorite picture, of your own and why?

Karen – I don’t have an absolute favorite, but I have a few that surprised me with their result. I was intending to photograph a field of wild poppies and lupines, the type you see along some highways here in the US, and that are never accessible. One day while on a photo outing and on the way to my lodging, in Virginia I saw a field of wild flowers that was accessible. It was located just below the highway in the center of an off ramp loop. The next morning, I headed back and intended to make some macro shots, but when I got into the field, I realized that the wind created by the traffic moving at 60+ miles on the Highway overhead was just not going to allow me the vision I had in mind. So, I played with the wind, instead of walking away from this beautiful field of flowers I had always wanted to capture I said, OK lets see what the wind will do, and I set an appropriate exposure for the scene found a composition I thought would work and cracked off several shots on my tripod. One of those shots is still a favorite of mine today and I use it in my presentation on composition to motivate students to work with the wind! It is also a great life lesson, when we find ourselves with not exactly what we had hoped for! Work with what we have.

© Karen Messick – “Kitchen Window” – Apps Used: Camera+, Glaze, Image Blender and FlyPaper texture

Joanne – Do you get emotionally involved with your photography?

Karen – I think it is hard to separate human emotion from art. I think it is an extension and outward expression of our emotion. I do not consciously say I am going to create a happy shot or a moody shot, it just happens, based on where I am my mood and my environment.

© Karen Messick – “Longwood Agave” – Apps Used: 6×6, ScratchCam and PhotoWizard

Joanne – Does your life become entwined with your subjects?

Karen – I would say life is my subject, and my images are part of me, so yes there is entwinement.
Entwinement to me is connectedness, woven together, so how can you separate it? It is entwined, and connected in ways we cannot verbally communicate. For example: There is an iPhone shot I made while in a Museum in Washington where I had a group of students learning mobile photography. The window and the furniture around the window was somewhat fanciful to me, the funny shapes of the stools juxtaposed with the traditional architecture of the Museum window and the buildings outside made me smile inside, and when I thought of the distortion I could create in addition, by making a handheld HDR Panoramic of the scene it made me smile even more. That little moment will always be with me. It was a happy entwinement.

© Karen Messick – “Longwood Music Room” – Apps Used: BracketMode, AutoStitch, Glaze, Image Blender and Snapseed

Joanne – Do you have a special post-processing style?

Karen – I like to explore many post processing styles and do but I often like to add a painterly effect from Glaze, AutoPainter or Artista Oil, just to see what will happen to the image when I do. In both my mobile photography and my Big Girl Camera photography I am evermore blending different images and layering effects from software programs like AlienSkin SnapArt3 or Nik Effects as well as using textures. But, sometimes as with any image straight works too!

© Karen Messick – “Nashville Elvis Piano” – Apps Used: BracketMode, Pro HDR, Percolator and Perfect Photo

Joanne – Do you have any tips for post-processing?

Karen – Process, and then walk away. Then look at it another day. See how the image looks to you when you have fresh eyes. Sometimes less is more, and experiment.

© Karen Messick – “New Mexico Abiqui Jug” – Apps Used: Camera+ and Snapseed

Joanne – Do you have a digital workflow system to sort your images, if so what is it?

Karen – Yes I use Image Capture on my Mac when connecting my iPhone. I like to sort periodically when I have worked through a collection of shots from a specific location shoot. I create desktop folders my shoot name and date and download off the iPhone selective images into that file. Then I can import that folder into a library catalog.

© Karen Messick – “New Mexico Window” – Apps Used: BracketMode, ProHDR, Snapseed and AutoPainter

Joanne – How do you think photography has changed over the years?

Karen – I think photography’s medium has always been light. I think that is still what’s at the core of every image, light, without it there is no image; we still need to be students of light. What has changed is how we use the light, the way we record the light with a digital medium. Using images today has become a way to create something other than a photograph in its absolute form. It has become a way to create an image and express a vision.

© Karen Messick – “New York Businessman” – Apps Used: 6×6, Noir and Snapseed

Joanne – As a mobile photographer you’re at the cutting edge of technology, do you ever hanker for the 35mm film days?

Karen – A resounding NO! I love what is happening today with photography. The tools we have available today for image creation and enhancement are fabulous. I love seeing all the amazing work that this new technology has unleashed. It is photography with the technology of our time!

© Karen Messick – “Old Town Alexandria Bench” – Apps Used: ClassicPan, AutoPainter2 and ImageBlender

ClassicPan

Iris Photo Suite

6×6

6×7

AutoPainter

AutoPainter 2

LensLight

Image Blender

Hipstamatic

PhotoArtista & Sketch

Camera+

Noir

Snapseed

Kyoobik Photo

Perfect Photo

PhotoWizard

Bracket Mode

PhotoForge

Glaze

ScratchCam

AutoStitch

Pro HDR

Percolator

BadCamera

Modern Grunge

© Karen Messick – “Sunflowers” – Apps Used: 6×6 and Bad Camera

© Karen Messick – “Windows” – Apps Used: Camera+, Hipstamatic, Modern Grunge, Image Blender and Snapseed