Mobile Photography and Art – A Picture’s Worth with Louise Whiting
‘A Picture’s Worth‘… is where we ask mobile photographers that have created powerful mobile photography/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. We have published a few A Picture’s Worth articles recently, if you have missed those – please go here.
In this A Picture’s Worth today we asked Louise Whiting to tell us more about her image featured here. Whiting has detailed her thoughts below, we think you’ll find this invaluable…
“I tend to use my iPhone for self portraits, its usually charged and ready to go at any time. I’m quite a spontaneous person and I don’t set time aside to create, my feelings at any given time dictate what I do photographically. Sometimes I just want to wander and take photos of anything that interests me and other times I just know I want to create something meaningful. Most of my self portraits are an expression of me, there is something of myself in all of them, they are an emotional representation, not necessarily physical. I struggle sometimes with how they’re perceived but at the end of the day I create them for myself, they help me make sense of things…I think some people can ‘see’ them, I hope so anyway.
There is so much in this image that I could write about but mostly it’s loss, the loss of people, family, animals, pets, friends, even myself, I think it is one of my favourite images.
As with a lot of my self portraits this one was taken with Slow Shutter, I really like the unpredictable effect, the smooth and continuous feeling of movement which I feel can help convey a certain mood.
With this particular portrait I changed the ambiance, deepening shadows and adding contrast in Snapseed, also using Snapseed I converted it to black and white, Snapseed for me is the best way to convert an image to black and white, there’s so much variation using the different colour levels. I always use the ‘Film’ option or the ‘Noir’ without grain, I prefer to add my own grain and other textures if needed in Procreate, I usually use Procreate to emphasise or recreate a part of the portrait that’ has got lost or looks weak, in this case the lower eye water rim and lower lashes, little details like that that make such a difference. Once I had added the textures, in this case I used two, I then went back into Snapseed to do any final adjustments”.
Untitled ©Louise Whiting
While you’re here…
….we have a small favour to ask. More people than ever are reading TheAppWhisperer.com and we could not be more excited about that. We bring you ad-free journalism every day, so you don’t have to close windows and be distracted with advertisements. We specialise in mobile photography and mobile art and we value all of our readers, writers, contributors and viewers but we do have costs and we do need to ask for your help. We at TheAppWhisperer spend many hours each day, each week and each month to bring you this high quality level of journalism. We do it because we are passionate about it and because we want others to be as passionate too.
If everyone who reads our website, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be so much more secure. Please help us by offering a contribution or supporting us with a monthly donation of your choosing. Please will you help us?
[seamless-donations]
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]
