COLUMNS,  Mobile Photo Essays,  News

Meri Walker Joins TheAppWhisperer As Co-Editor of Mobile Photo Essays Column

I am delighted to announce that Meri Walker (iPhoneArtGirl) has officially joined TheAppWhisperer as co-editor of our Mobile Photo Essays column, accompanying our established Editor, Gina Costa.  Walker has the experience and knowledge that we desire and relish within Mobile Photography and Art and her continued participation and dedication to Mobile Photo Stories has not gone unnoticed. We wanted to bring her on board in order to work with Costa, to expand our audience and bring greater knowledge and participation to all of you.

Mobile Photo Essays are very dear to my heart, they are expressive, expansive and speak a universal language. We want to encourage you to submit your photo essays to us for publication. We appreciate that many of you are hesitant to focus on mobile photography essays and we want to help you break through your fear.  There are many ways you can structure your photo story, I have detailed some tips below.  

We suggest that you use the app Stellar and the hashtag #theappwhisperer, so we can find them. I have embedded one of Walker’s most recent Mobile Photo Essays, via Stellar, to demonstrate how we can feature yours too.

TheAppWhisperer is growing at a phenomenal rate and trying to include as much unique content and variety from the mobile photography and art world as our readers can possibly digest, you really don’t need to go anywhere else!  I have some more exciting news to announce shortly, stand by for that!

Please join us in warmly welcoming Meri Walker to the TheAppWhisperer family. Welcome to you, it feels so good to have you join us Meri! You can read a little more about Meri below.

Meri Walker – ©Carolyn Hall Young

Meri Aaron Walker (iPhoneArtGirl) has taught art photography and photojournalism for over four decades. She has received over 50 awards and grants in the US and Europe and her work is included in numerous private and public collections. For the last five years, Walker has worked solely with mobile technologies and with programs which allows to adapt traditional photography to the new tools of mobile devices. Walker has two websites and she is a member of New Era Museum She also served as a juror for the Florence International Photography Awards. in 2015, and she was the sole juror of the Cell Phone IV Show for the Texas Photographic Society; most recently she was a member of the MIRA Mobile Prize 2016 Jury.


Tips On Structuring Your Photo Essay

If your photo essay is demonstrating how something is created (literal or not) from beginning to end then this is a good format. It could be the creation of an art painting, or something like an arrest – both are relevant.

Chronology

This does not have to be ‘real time’ it can be implied but you can use time to structure your essay.

Highlights

Sometimes it might be more appropriate to pick out highlights, this offers an alternative to a structureless essay. Examples of this could include a natural disaster or the death of a public figure. News organisations quite often use this technique and also use a number of photographers and perhaps more commonly now, citizen journalists at the scene to provide content.

Signature Photo

A photo that summaries the entire issue and illustrates essential elements of the story. This might be a photo of woman — maybe your main character.

Establishing or Overall Shot

A wide-angle shot to establish the scene.The idea of the establishing shot is this: When you do a photo story you are taking your viewers on a journey. You need to give them a sense of where they are going, an image that allows them to understand the rest of the story in context.

Close-Up

A detail shot to highlight a specific element of the story. Close-up, sometimes called detail shots, don’t carry a lot of narrative. Meaning, they often don’t do a lot to inform the viewer on a literal level but they do a great deal to dramatize a story.

Portrait

This can be either a tight head shot or a more environment portrait in a context relevant to the story. As mentioned above, photo essays are built around characters. You need to have good portrait that introduces the viewers to the character.

Interaction

Focuses on the subject in a group during an activity. Images of your character interacting with others — all helps give a human dimension to your character.

How-To Sequence

This is photo or group of photos that offer a how-to about some specific element of the story or process.

The Clincher

A photo that can be used to close the story, one that says “the end.”

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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: joanne@theappwhisperer.com

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