The Apps We Are Using This Month with John Nieto

The Apps We Are Using This Month with John Nieto

Welcome to TheAppWhisperer’s new section, “What apps are we using this month” series, where we discover which apps you are particularly enjoying. Kicking us off today is none other than Multi-Award Winning Mobile Artist John Nieto. His work can be considered an intersection between portraiture, conceptual, street, and journalism—a crossroads on which he stresses multiple layers of time, history, and motion that constitute our present. He is an artist who has impressed us so much that we offer his work for sale in our online gallery. Please visit this link to view his current collection. This collection offers a mode of aesthetic perception and representation that emphasises the openness of the future, while also underlining any conception of the present as a mere replay of the past. Nieto’s art invites viewers to probe the aesthetics of still images and to recalibrate their sense of time, his art is an event, it’s an experience to view and share

John Nieto here, currently living in San Francisco, California. I am 60 years old. I’ve been a hairdresser for 4 decades, evolving into mobile photography with the introduction of smartphones, and more recently, working on canvas since the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. I used an iPhone 12 Pro Max to create the following images.

‘’Movie Night” was the 1st place winner in the 10th Annual Mobile Photo Awards in the Digital Fine Art category. With the help of the projector’s dramatic light, I used Snapseed to enhance the light blue outline of the body shape and sharpen the eyes. A vignette helped to isolate the subject and eliminate noise from the background. The triangular grid was the result of using certain effects within the DECIM8 app, which added more triangle shapes than I needed. I then used the Juxtaposer app to apply it as a top layer, allowing me to erase any unwanted areas and merge the two as needed.

This next photo, “Return of the Guardians”, was one that almost went to the trash bin. I sometimes reserve those for exercises in expanding my creative boundaries, in the hopes of breathing new life into them. For me, that would be the case with this one. After running this through Snapseed, where I also used the negative of a second photo to create a double exposure and achieve the leafy foreground, I imported it into the ProCreate app for iPad Pro. In ProCreate, I scribbled the hint of a skyline, given that the entire space behind me is the city of San Francisco. I am a fan of dramatic light and contrast, and a sunset was the best place to find such light. I tend to lean toward mystical and/or paranormal content from time to time, and adding the green glowing orbs as a final touch was what led to the title of this piece.

The following photo, “Belong To Oneself”, was shot on the Sausalito side of the San Francisco Bay. I was intrigued by the sense of solitude this person must embrace to embark on these cold and choppy waters with the imposing wall of the city lining the horizon. In this case, the simplicity of the moment spoke more to me than the editing process outside of basic fine-tuning, but again, I used Snapseed to vignette and contrast. The almost watercolour texture was applied using the Mextures app, an early favourite for moodiness. As a final touch, the seagull was stored from earlier shots I saved as a “stamp” in Juxtaposer. One of the things I really love about Juxtaposer, (I’m sure there are others), is the ability to isolate elements of an image and save them as “stamps” for future use and reference. Some of these appear in other works of mine to help flesh out a scene or give a better sense of the surroundings and sounds that might be part of the location’s experience.

Peace, Freedom, and Indigo. Another example of using the DECIM8 app to deconstruct the scene. The brightness, contrast, and saturation were adjusted using Snapseed before the seagull was introduced into the picture as a stroke of light with Juxtaposer.

“420 Portrait of Luke” was created on the unofficial national holiday here in the U.S., where producers, consumers and advocates gather to celebrate all things cannabis on April 20th each year. Juxtaposer was the perfect app for this to happen. Shot in the corner of an attic with strong light, I layered the same image on top of itsel,f then slid it over a bit and erased the face of the new top layer.

I intend always to remain open to new ideas and share information with others who find excitement in the tools they’re using. I’ve always considered myself a futurist, and one of the ways I process how I fit in the world is by exploring as much as I can, given the tools available, whether in its concept, execution, or cultural relevance.

Artificial Intelligence is probably the most recent, (and controversial), since my exploration began in the Fall of 2022. The Wonder app is where all of this took place. All the images I’ve produced through this ai app began by using photos from my archive to expand on an idea using the relevant prompts.

The final image I’ve chosen to share with you today is a post-apocalyptic story of survival entitled “Turn A Blind Eye”. Based on a photo of the San Francisco skyline merged with a portrait of a close friend. These two separate images merged into one again through the Juxtaposer app. The result was absolutely magical to me after a day or two of reworking it to my satisfaction, and still recognising the outcome as photos I had recently taken. Most of the apps I’ve chosen to share today are ones I’ve used for many years now and will continue working with, as long as my vision continues to find fulfilment within them. Thank you for your time and interest. Please visit me on Instagram at @john_nieto or my website, johnnietophotography.com, to stay up-to-date with my current work or share your ideas.