Mobile Photography Interview – A Day in the Life of David Scott Leibowitz from New Jersey, USA

Let’s start at the beginning of the day, how does your day start?

Normally it’s coffee first, but Meri likes to sleep in, so I sneak out to shoot in some early light and to grab a few rays before the sun gets crazy hot.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz

Do you like to head out and take photographs early on?

When I’m on vacation, I do want to get up and shoot  but today, I also wanted to play with my favorite new toy, the OSMO Mobile iPhone stabiliser. After shooting some amazing video, I discovered a Long Exposure stills mode in the DJI camera app called “Lighttrial” that’s the bomb, so I shot a million of those. Here’s a few favs from the morning’s walk.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz

How did the transition from traditional artist to mobile artist develop?

Not sure if I’ve ever been a traditional anything. I just love visual exploration so my 35 mm stills were all blurry on purpose and my darkroom work was mainly compositing. I was an official Polaroid artist for over 12 years, Test magazine covers, PhotoExpo demo artist, Polaroid International Collection (Google SX70 art) and then discovered Photoshop 1.0 then Painter 1.0.

My transition to digital art was complete in 1991 and in 2008, on the day the app store opened, the day the Mobile Digital Art movement began, I was there. I built the app iPhone art gallery app, iCreated, with developer Andrew C. Stone in 2009, wrote the book “Mobile Digital Art” by Focal Press in 2013 and opened the art gallery, Mobile Digital Art & More in 2015.

Do you like to download new mobile photography and/or art apps regularly?

Is every day too regularly? I download apps to a fault.

Would you consider changing platforms and why?

If Apple starts producing weapons of mass destruction, I’ll consider it.

How often do you update your existing apps? What are your current favorites and what features do you look for in a new app?

Whenever my iPhone or iPad tell me I have 27 apps that need updating I try to do it…..

Favorite Apps:

Specific to this Day in the Life article, here a few movies created on this trip using the iPhone 6 Plus,  and the OSMO Mobile image stabiliser.

https://vimeo.com/208995738

https://vimeo.com/207144911

Time Piles – Unique live visual effects generator ( I was born to use Time Piles)

FilMic Pro– Great for general shooting, intuitive controls

DJI OSMO camera app– Designed to function with DJI OSMO Mobile hardware

Videon – friendly iPad video editor

iMotion– Timelapse/ Stop motion

Native Camera App- 4K Video, Slo-motion, Time lapse

Painted Cam – Moving painting, Glaze with motion and sound

imaengine – Painted video effects using imaengine algorithms

Diptic Video – Video collage

Roll World – Tiny Planet/ Rabbithole your video!

Frame Delay – Time shifting video recording (works on some older devices with older iOS)

Infinite Eye – Live Video Feedback generator

VideoFX Live – Just like it sounds

Action Movie – Fun on steroids

MadPad HD – Smule fun!

To see some of these apps in action, go to:

Pro HDR – Requires a steady hand and multiple exposures, but worth it

Vivid HDR – Great run-and-gun captures for my style of iPhoneography

Long Expo Pro – awesome for motion capture blur/ sharpen controls

Hydra – shoot large file size images

Camera+ – Versatile shooter with built in macro

SeeThis – Hockney-esque collage right out of the box

360 – My new go to 360 app with the death of Photosynth

Magic Shutter – Capable camera with controllable blurry good times

Decim8 – somehow this glitch generator never gets old

DJI OSMO camera – unique long exposure modes, automated panoramic modes

Image editors

iColorama – I have seen the light….there is nothing so fine as iColorama image editing

Procreate – I love this app for all things collage, invaluable tool

Snapseed – love the interface and the HDR algorithms

Leonardo – my old standby still does some great things

InsanoGraph – who doesn’t feel a little crazy lately?

Matter – an extra layer of crazy, crazy great!

PhotoViva – reminds me of Fractal Painter fun

Strip Design – you never know when you want to turn your life into a cartoon strip

I loved shooting in Jamaica and shooting in Venice or Paris is magical, but iLove shooting in NYC because you can physically feel the energy of the city flowing through your body.

‘iPhoneArtGirl playing in the RockPool’ ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with native camera, edited with Snapseed and iColorama)

I have an archive on Flickr that does back to the old days, 2008…Ha Ha, but seriously, a lot of my Mobile Art friends migrated to Facebook and Instagram and lately I’ve been building my presence on Knox Bronsons’s new P1xels site which is quite elegant and should become a great place to hang my hat.

Do you use your mobile phone everyday to take images?

Without fail.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with VividHDR, edited with Snapseed)

Do you like to use external hardware products with your mobile device for image and video capturing, such as lenses, tripods, external storage and battery packs?

I’ve been using the Exo lens system for over a year now and love it, but need to upgrade to their new Zeiss lenses. I use their wide angle lens constantly.

The OSMO Mobile stabiliser I recently purchased is a total game changer, facilitating unbelievably smooth camera movement to iPhone videos. A revolutionary device.

I also carry a zero lemon 20,000 mAh solar battery that keeps me juiced and a SanDisk 128 GB USB->iPhone flash drive to dump large files when that dreaded error message about low disk space appears.

Do you edit images on your mobile devices or do you prefer to use a desktop or laptop computer?

I’ve been a Photoshop user since 1.0 and still use it for pre-press and printing, but significant image editing all happens on the iPhone or iPad.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with native camera, no edit)

Where do you envisage your mobile photography passion will take you? Have you been involved with exhibitions etc

OMG Joanne, you don’t have enough space here for me to answer this one. Let’s just say that this passion will take me to places that haven’t been invented yet and this uncertainty fuels the passion. I say that everything I’ve ever done artistically in my life has lead me to this magical moment and then, the moment changes. How beautiful!

I have been involved with exhibiting my Mobile art on-line and in the real world since 2009 and from 2015-2017 owned and operated the worlds first physical gallery dedicated to Mobile Digital Art, located in Boonton New Jersey. I closed the doors this past January and am now proceeding with our on-line endeavours and a traveling mobile gallery on wheels, maybe the subject of another piece.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with VividHDR, edited with Snapseed and iColorama)

Where do you see the future of mobile photography?

I see it dominating areas of photography and videography the way word processing eliminated print shops. In the past few years it has already replaced so many photographic institutions we’ve barely noticed.

I just conducted a Mobile Digital art event in Times Square and it was hard to spot anyone using a camera to take a photograph. Only phones. We are witnessing the evolution of photography, sped up by Mobile.

Video is another area mobile will dominate, replacing large, clunky, expensive recording devices. News gathering will become more democratic and personal, told by any bystander who can hold their phone steady.

I could write another book about this……

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with vividHDR, edited with Snapseed)

What do you think is the most popular area of mobile photography?

I don’t think there is one. I just see diversity in thought, spirit and execution.

Do you think it is country Specific, are some nations more clued up?

I don’t see any boundaries and that’s why I know in my heart that the purity of this art movement is real. It’s about communication and beauty in the most universal way.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with vividHDR, edited with Snapseed and Tiny Planet)

If you could select a specification for a smartphone, what features would you select, photographically speaking?

Unlimited battery, unlimited storage, waterproof to 50 ft, Zeiss glass for the camera, optical zoom and macro capabilities for a start.

Photo ©David Scott Leibowitz (shot with vividHDR, edited with Snapseed and iColorama)

What do you think of Joanne and theappwhisperer.com?

Same team! No really, it’s important that this art movement have multiple curators and multiple sources for information, education and inspiration. She’s all that.

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