The App Nerds Workshop – Working Around Your Reality By Lola Mitchell

This is going to be a long post, a little about me, a tutorial and my favorites from the App Nerd Flickr group. I feel like sharing what photography means to me as well as what brought me to iPhone photography.

It is no secret that my father was a photographer so I always had a camera in my hand. However what I don’t share is the reason it was so important for me to document my children’s life. My mother passed away when I was very young, 6 years old, and as a defense mechanism (I think) I have no memories of her. Now you would think that I have an enormous amount of photos from my childhood, but the truth is I do not. I mainly have photos of my mother when she was a model when she was young in Argentina, and then as a contemporary dancer and actress in France. I have probably less than 10 family photos.

When my son was born 4 years ago I made it a mission to make sure I took pictures of his growing up and our family. I also got my first iPhone which was great because taking care of a baby and carrying a big camera is almost impossible. I deeply admire people that do it! The iPhone unleashed something in me. I was finally able to show the world as I saw it. At first I put my kids in a lot of my photos, now they still make an appearance but not constant. I have two kids one is 4 years old and the other is 2. So often my shooting conditions look something like this.

©Lola Mitchell

Now lately I have been wanting to spread my wings and develop my photography further. I am itching to go out and shoot other people. The reality is I am at home with two kids that are of course very demanding. Scheduling photo shoots is almost impossible. I did a few portraits of my neighbor and a friend of mine but these took me 5-10 minutes of shooting….Not what I wish I had but that is the reality.
I started doing self portraits because I was itching to edit and we had been stuck at home sick for about two weeks.

This happened again a flu and here I was sleep deprived and stuck at home. So once I was better and just the taking care of the rest of the family I did what I could. A self portrait while the kids were taking their baths with their dad.

Below is the photo cropped with snapseed and I worked with elasticam to smoosh the couch seems, as well as erased my other shoulder to showcase my neck more.

©Lola Mitchell

Next step Icolorama, I love their brushes although I have to admit I still have lots to learn about how to use them.

©Lola Mitchell

I then went into Procreate and added hair and some eye makeup.

©Lola Mitchell

I thought the bottom was too solid compared to the top so I went back into icolorama.

©Lola Mitchell

Then I went into Luminance and added a filter.

©Lola Mitchell

I liked the effect on top it made me think of trees and water and photo of a puddle with tree reflections, I took back in November with Kitcam. This is the pic I used.

©Lola Mitchell

So I went into Superimpose and blended the two images together. I moved the puddle image so that the tree branches were all the way on top to blend with the icolorama brushes. Played with modes and transparency until I liked the result.

©Lola Mitchell

I really liked the result so I moved the puddle image again to have a branch on my face.

©Lola Mitchell

I went back into procreate and added some hair.

©Lola Mitchell

Then I wanted to add birds because trees and birds go together in my mind I guess. So I used the pic I have used many times now taken at a playground back in january. (I think it is time to start looking up again and get a new pic of birds flying).

©Lola Mitchell

Added the birds on Superimpose, it took two steps so that I could use different blending modes. Here is the result.

©Lola Mitchell

By then I was so happy to be editing a photo and seeing transform in front of my eyes. I had been sick and feeing very unproductive so I started thinking about what I could do about the very dark spot in the photo. You could not really see hair. So I looked through my photos and found another puddle photo with clouds on it.

©Lola Mitchell

So I put these two in superimpose and blended them together.

©Lola Mitchell

Then I was done. I went into Photocopier and added a filter.

©Lola Mitchell

It was a little yellow but I like what it did for my nature theme, so I went into image blender and blended at 50%. And this if the final image with my signature added on iwatermark.

©Lola Mitchell

I have to say I never thought I would do self portraits, I also never thought I would be able to transform reality without having and learning photoshop. I work with what I have to try not to feel restricted by it. That is especially true for me about time, I definitely do not feel restricted by using apps. I always feel like I wish I could have more time to dedicate to photography. The way I see it, I am learning the ropes while my kids are not in school yet. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to create even more.

This week I am finally starting to feature my favorites from our App Nerd Flickr Group.
Please keep posting there are some truly amazing work being posted.

The links to the images below on Flickr are here:
Pat St H
Scott A. Woodward
Andy Royston.

©Pat StH

©Scott A. Woodward

©Andy Royston Apps used (Photowizard, laminar, image blender)