iPhoneography

Guest Reviewer: Narin Chalabi

Narin is an ex-pupil of mine from Notredame High. She is now a university student, a Tumblr and Deviant Art contributor, a Tweeter, an animator and an excellent photographer. She has been featured on the blog previously and continues to impress me with her talents.

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iPhone photography or ‘iPhoneography’ has recently become a very popular trend amongst iPhone users. Ever since the iPhone app Instagram came out, it has been a huge hit and the number of people signing up is growing every day. However, it doesn’t just end at Instagram, there are some amazing photo editing apps out there which are just as good as Photoshop (not really).

I’ll be sharing some of the apps I use the most and what I think of them. For the non-free apps I have tried my best to give you as much information about them as possible. I hope this will be useful for you.

Snapseed; (£2.99) ★★★★☆

Snapseed in my opinion is one of the best apps on the iPhone for editing photos. There are many types of different filters in it which allows you to fully bring out the colours of a dull photo. Whenever I edit my photos on the iPhone I always have to use Snapseed first in order to bring out the colours of the photo and make it more attractive to the eye. The price may be a little high, however… be on the lookout as they sometimes do promotions and they make the app free!

This app allows you to:

* Automatically adjust the photo

* Selectively adjust the photo

* Tune image: allows you to change the; Brightness, Ambience, contrast, saturation and white balance

* Straighten

* Crop (free form crop or adjusted sized crops)

* Details: like sharpening your photo or changing its structure (I guess it means bringing out the shapes more)

* Black and white: you can adjust the brightness, contrast and grain. There are also adjusted black and white filters too for you to use.

* Vintage: Lets you change; Brightness, saturation, texture strength, centre size and style strength

* Drama: makes the photo more dramatic

* Grudge

* Centre focus

* Frames

* Tilt and shift

LensLight: (£0.69) ★★★☆☆

I think this app is rather fun to use; you can create some amazing photos with it, especially sunsets where the sun isn’t in the photo. This app lets you add overlays of different light effects which a normal camera would create. It’s got well over 20 different overlays of these effects and it can be fun to play around with at times. The only problem I found with it is that it crashed a lot for me when I first installed it.

Above you’ll find examples of some of the stuff it can do: (the first two photos are the same photo, but just edited differently.)

Juxtaposer: (£1.99) ★★★★☆

With Juxtaposer you can create some of the most amazing photos on iPhone. It can take several tries until you become a pro at it, however this app, to me, is amazing and has a feature on it that Photoshop doesn’t and that’s an “unerase” button. It’s so useful I think the creators of Photoshop could learn something from this app.

This app is mostly used for photomanipulation photos via your iphone. You can also create your own stamps. For example, say you only wanted the moon from the photo so you would cut round the moon and just save the moon as a stamp and it will forever be saved in your app and you can use the stamp whenever you want. It’s very useful. Here are some photos I’ve created with it:

For this photo I cut out one of the eyes in a photo I had taken previously and created a butterfly with it. To create a white background, you need to upload the white background first, then add which ever stamp/photo you want to it.

Combining two photos together to create a prettier photo.

This is a good example which portrays the idea of the stamp tool. First I added the moon in, and then I cut out the birds in this photo and used them as stamps several times to create this composition. (This photo’s been processed through a filter afterward, but just using it to show an example)

FX Photostudio : (£0.69) ★★★★☆

This app is somewhat the whole package if you want to add filters, do a colour splash or adjust your photo a little bit. It has well over 80 filters in it which you can use and all of them are rather good. What I really like about this app is that you can select yourself where the filter effect takes place as you can erase and un-erase some parts of the filter. However you cannot adjust the position of the filter.

An example of its colour splash.

Blurring the background.

Using its symmetry effect.

Water effect overlay with Rainbow filter.

Free apps

After having a look at the free apps, I’ve come to the realisation that the apps that are free to buy change all the time. Many of the editing apps which get released are promotions then later they are priced again. Therefore it’s very difficult to tell you the free apps as it could change by the time you read this and have a look.

However, apps like Pixlr-o-matic, Squaready, Water my Photo and Phototreats have been free for a long time, so they must be free apps and not free promo apps.

Therefore, for free apps, you will always need to have a look out on the free section of “photo & video” category as you never know what might be there. Apps such as Snapseed and add ons for Hipstamatic have been offered free on a limited basis. It is worth checking this section regularly and thanks to this I’ve helped save myself some money.

Danger Doppelgängers!

I first introduced you to Narin300‘s work around a year ago. Since then, her ideas have been developing and her skills have advanced tenfold. I was so shocked at the publication of her new images featuring her interacting with her own doppelgänger that I had to show them off as soon as possible. The images remind me of work that was featured in Saatchi’s ‘Sensational’ exhibition a few years back, though they hold no pretension.

The trick is simple, though Narin has pushed it into something far more than the visual magic. It takes a while to notice that it is the same person, that’s because she has been very clever in developing slight different personalities for ‘herself’. Even when the characters are wearing similar or identical clothing, by changing her emotions or interactions, Narin has developed two different people. You could even be forgiven for thinking that these photos are of identical twins.

You can check out more of her artwork over on her deviant art profile:

http://narin300.deviantart.com/

Turn The Other Cheek

A sneak glimpse of some of the work being created for the new Art Clast Podcast. The first episode is a Halloween Special. Below, Alison shows off her cut created for the make up section of the podcast. Photography by Megan R.

Jackie Zom-B

WARNING! : THOSE THAT ARE A LITTLE FRIGHTENED OF HORROR IMAGERY MAY WANT TO HIDE BEHIND THEIR SOFA NOW.

Jackie B (S3 from Lochgilphead) is full of surprises. One of her most extreme surprises are these little gems below. She gets together with a few friends in her spare time and makes short zombie films. The use of special effects are really impressive for something that is essentially shot on a mobile phone.

The town of Lochgilphead and its surrounding areas is small and quiet, so it’s perfect to shoot something like this. Zombie shots need desolation and emptiness. These are by no means Jackie’s attempt to be really hard hitting and professional, for her, they’re something to do, a little mess around. Have a little fun and do something creative. What better way to spend your day?

Those regular readers or people who know me out there will know that this very much, ‘my cup of tea’. I love horror films and dressing up for Halloween. It’s quite hard to pull off a good zombie, but the use of contacts, the lack of care for clothes and skin when it comes to adding blood and getting a believable walk are the three main keys to perfecting a zombie. Jackie looks absolutely fantastic.

I have also had the chance to see some short clips that Jackie has produced with a friend and I hope that she will get a chance to make them into a short film or a show reel, because they really were very scary. With the right music and sound effects, she could make Romero or the Shaun of the Dead crew tremble.

Jackie is currently working on more youtube videos and will probably be scaring the skeleton out of you soon. Carefully watch this space…

Press Photos From YBAA Kelvingrove

I finally acquired copies of the photos taken at the Kelvingrove Museum Workshop for the Young Brits at Art 2010 competition. The photographs, taken by photographer David Cruickshanks, sum up the concentration and energy that was presented at the workshop. There hadn’t been the turnout that was promised by the museum, though it was a fun event and great to see some ex-pupils again.

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Helen S (S5, Oban High School) created one of my favourite pieces (above, definitely in my top ten) for the Young Brits at Art competition, it’s bluntly honest, the typography is great and the image is fragile and colourfully unhappy. I happened to come across her photographs after she twittered me. I didn’t know that she was the same Helen S from Oban and was in the middle of writing her a tweet to feature her, when she emailed and asked me would I have a look at her pics?! Spooky.

Helen’s photos are extremely thoughtful. Usually super macro shots of nature or something around us that we would probably take for granted if she hadn’t focused our attentions on its beauty.

The colours are so vivid with sharp definition of details and forms. It is hard to believe that these photos are taken by someone so young. Her subject matter varies widely too which helps hold a viewer interest. It is often disappointing when photographers get caught up in catching similar scenes and become a parody of themselves.

If you like what you see and would like to see more, visit Helen’s Deviant Art Profile:

DropDeadDream93

Katie’s Magic Eye Revisited.

I recently featured the work of Katie H-M (from S5, Oban High) in a pupil profile and have a little update for those that were as mesmerised by her work as I was. Katie has been in touch and she has collected some thoughts and her favourite photo to enter into the Young Brits at Art competition.

The competition closes on the 30th April, so those that are a little bored of me going on about it will be happy to know that I will be thoroughly ‘shushed’ after that.

Anyway, Katie has emailed me her work and I will submit it directly through the website as a single entry. In the meantime, enjoy the finished entry below:

Katie’s Magic Eye

Katie H-M (S5) from Oban High School is a photographer and an expressive artist. When she isn’t painting large colourful paintings with stains and inks, she is photographing resources for those paintings.

I first witnessed her work when she had brought this collection of images along to a Young Brits at Art workshop, and although I liked the style of Katie’s paintings, it was her photographic resources that really blew me away.

Katie’s photos reminded me of the faked fairy pictures taken by two sisters many years ago. Not just because she wore fairy wings in some of the images, but more because of the feeling of the photos, the magic, the mystery.

There was also an air of Courtney Love about the pictures. They reminded me of the Hole cover artwork due to the sense of sadness and portraying a feeling of being lost inside your own bubble. I’m also reminded of the visual work of Amanda Palmer due to the exquisite face make-up and self-produced ethos.

Katie experiments with the use of light to cause blurring and obstruction within her photos. This forces the audience to look a bit longer and try a little harder to gain reward from the image. Some images are bleached with light, making them feel heavenly.

As you can see, Katie has a great eye for composition, even if she’s in front of the camera. A cottage industry within a single body, she’s the ideas girl, the lighting operator, the cameraperson and even the model. Inspiring images for anyone who’s interested in taking up photography. Fabulous.

Nothing Compares To Sleeping

I first met Narin (Narin300) a few years back when she was taking part in Notredame High School’s Animation Club. She had crazy but great ideas and was very focused and driven in materializing those ideas. Meeting her again recently, it is good to see that she is keeping the creativity going and has moved onto photography and photo manipulation.

Narin’s photographs are extremely well finished. As a ‘photoshopper’ myself, I often study images to see how they’ve been created, but Narin’s photos do not reveal their ingredients so easily. The images are so professionally composed and finished that I am confused to how they are put together, leading me to believe that the images must be the truth; they must be real.

Her images usually consist of a landscape or dreamscape, an unbelievably beautiful sky with an unbelievable element contained within it. It is a merging of the fantastical with science, they could almost be a set design for a science fiction film.

Though Narin is not limited to any single idea, she takes amazing natural shots, like this amazing close up of aphids on a beetle’s belly (above). Sure, it does help when you have a great piece of equipment to work with, but the most expensive camera in the world does not give you the eye for that perfect shot or the idea for one.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Narin’s work, you can visit her Deviant Art profile below:

Narin300