What Apps Are We Using This Month? with Sarah Bichachi
What Apps Are We Using This Month? with Sarah Bichachi
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 non-other than Award Winning Mobile Artist, Sarah Bichachi.
First of all, I would like to thank Joanne Carter for this invitation to be featured in this prestigious website. I’m Sarah Bichachi, 66 years old, residing in Surprise, Arizona, an art lover and a performing artist… a jazz vocal to be exact who works as Merchandising Assistant in retail regularly and do gigs during day offs. I used to dance ballet in my younger years, but I still play the piano today. When I was diagnosed with cancer seven years ago, chemotherapy temporarily debilitated my activities. But it opened a new door to my artistic path… a path that led me to a new art form we call Mobile Art.
Apps are very interesting tools in Mobile Art. Although the apps I use vary depending on the ideas my imagination concoct, I have two basic apps that come as constants in my editing equation. First and foremost is Icolorama. This app comes in handy with editing raw images because it has almost all the tools necessary in enhancing photographs, balancing light and dark, denoising, toning and the like. Icolorama makes a good starter in my editing process before adding anything else to my primary subject.
Then, I go to Procreate. I find Procreate very convenient for color infusions because it has a tool that localizes areas in your image for coloring or superimposing other images into your primary layer without fear of it smearing outside your margins. It has a layering technology that can make you add anything you desire as much as you want to your edit without destroying your primary image, not to mention its library of awesome brushes to paint into your layers if you wish to do so as well.
Then, after Procreate is the time I will escalate my usage of apps depending on what my imagination dictates. I like to use Carbon for black and white toning. It also has a wonderful combination of grains and noises. There is Elasticam to disfigure images, Distressed FX+ for colorful grunge, Metabrush and Glaze for painterly effects, Formulas for blurry duotones. Because I love portraits, I use LightXExpress’ awesome variations of lighting and shade adjustments, filters and editing tools to set the mood and character of my subject. In Mextures, I can create and save my own textures. It is simply amazing! The list goes on and on.
This month, I was working on one of my Efflorescence series which required several blendings for a perfect collage of my face evolving into a flower. iColorama is the perfect app for interlacing two images with a fading opacity, Metabrush for the painterly effect on my face, Distressed FX+ for the grunge and LightXExpress for toning with a slight touch of a Mexture emulsion.
In my work ‘A Poem She Wrote’, almost everything was drawn and colored in Procreate. The checkered floor I tweaked in Elasticam and the final blending for the pencil and my selfies was done in iColorama.
In Monochromatic Dream, I first shaded my face in Procreate, blended the other images in iColorama, used Carbon black and white filters and toning presets then added the stars and clouds back in Procreate.
To read our other interviews in this series, please go here.
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Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
