Showing posts with label Exhibition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exhibition. Show all posts
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Open Call to Mobile Photographers: Deadline June 2 | Commanding Vision
Attention all Mobile Photographers!
I am pleased to spread the word about the open call to mobile artists for an upcoming exhibition in Corvallis, Oregon in August. The deadline is fast approaching on June 2, 2014. Details below.
What: Call for photographs made with mobile devices (phones or tablets)
When: August 21 – September 28, 2014
Where: The Arts Center, Main Gallery, Corvallis, Oregon
Deadline to Apply: June 2, 2014
How to Apply: Online
Artists have embraced technology as an art-making process since photography became available in the 1800s. Each new technological advance increased the tools available for creativity and artistic expression through photography and mobile photography is no exception. This method of image making has the potential for the greatest widespread influence of any type of photographic innovation. People who would never have considered themselves an artist, or even creative at all, now have the means to be just that with mobile device camera technology at their fingertips.
We are looking for the full breadth and depth of what mobile photography has to offer. While the chemical darkroom allowed some latitude for expression, the digital darkroom increases the possibilities for manipulation of images even more dramatically. Mobile devices have a myriad of programs and apps–all on the device itself–that give the photographer an incredible opportunity for creative expression. Mobile photography ranges from the representational to the abstract, from street photography, still lifes, portraits and landscapes to fully abstracted impressions. We hope to see examples of all these approaches, highlighting how mobile photography contributes to the expanding artistic vision of photography.
Eligibility:
- The Call is open to all individuals using a mobile device to create images.
- All images must have been created in the last two years.
- Work previously exhibited at The Arts Center will not be accepted or presented to the jurors.
Terms and Parameters:
- The original image must be created and edited in its entirety on a mobile device, either phone or tablet.
- The submitting artist must be the owner of the image.
- All submissions must be via digital image uploaded via the online submission form
- The $10 application fee must be received by the deadline. Applicants may submit up to 5 images for this amount.
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Monday, November 9, 2015
Matthew Burlem - Signal Lost
As part as an ongoing effort to highlight mobile photographers who are exhibiting their work, I am pleased to present this interview with Matthew Burlem. If you're in the London area, be sure to stop by to view his work in person.
What is your name and where do you live?
MB: My name is Matthew Burlem, and I live in North Greenwich, in London, UK, right by the Thames.
How did you get started in mobile photography?
MB: My background is in photography, having done a degree in Photography at Blackpool in the North of England, in 1995.
This was before digital, of course, so I was dealing with several different formats of cameras and film, from 35mm and 6x7 rolls right through to 5x4 and 10x8 sheet film, developing and printing most of it myself.
Doing this degree taught me to develop my eye for a good composition, and my work was mostly still-life on 5x4 at the time, requiring meticulous lighting, props and sets, where each picture could take days, if not weeks to finish, from setting it all up, getting all the lighting right, doing Polaroids, processing the film, darkroom printing etc., so it was all very involved but a good exercise in patience and detail.
Having left college, I then assisted several advertising and editorial photographers in London, again, using various formats of film cameras and lighting, in studios and on location, the idea being that I would then become a professional photographer myself, and whilst I did undertake small photography commissions, I found myself getting more into the digital retouching side of things, and gradually, the assisting diminished and the retouching work grew, until one day, I realised I wasn't going to make photography my career and that I would do it for myself so that it would remain fun and enjoyable and not become a 'job'.
Mobile phones with cameras were beginning to come in then, but it wasn't until I got my first iPhone - a 3G, that I realised the potential of what having a pretty decent camera in my pocket all the time meant, and I found myself snapping everything I saw, on a day to day basis, and using an app to instantly convert it into a 'Polaroid', which impressed me a lot and made me want to do more.
This was quite an antidote to the laboriously set up and controlled still life images I had been doing, and also to the retouching work I was making a living in, as it was pretty much what you see is what you get.
I loved the little glimpses of life and small details of my environment that I could capture any time, any place, where a DSLR or even a compact camera wouldn't have been suitable or subtle enough, such as on public transport or in a shop, so this opened up a world of possibility in what I could photograph and I found myself noticing details and fleeting events that I would previously have never noticed.
As the iPhone camera has improved, the quality of the images is often amazing, and the plethora of apps out there means I can create any look or feel I want to whilst on the move.
What device do you use? Do you edit on your phone or a tablet?
MB: Whoever coined the phrase "The best camera is the one you have with you" really summed up the beauty of mobile photography, because whilst you may own the most expensive and sophisticated DSLR in the world, unless you have it with you and ready to shoot all the time, you're going to miss a lot of potentially great images.
I have my phone with me wherever I am, as well as a back-up battery pack, so I know I don't have to miss anything.
Everything is done on my iPhone 5 - the shooting, the editing, the processing, the lot. Previously I had the iPhone 4 and before that, the 3G, and now the camera is able to give a very impressive quality, as are the apps that are now abundant in the App Store.
My favourite app used to be Polarize, which converted the image into what looked like an instant Polaroid, which always gave a lovely feel to them, but that was discontinued and stopped working in later versions of iOS, so I moved on to ShakeItPhoto, which also did a pretty good job of emulating a Polaroid.
Nowdays, I don't do the Polaroid thing so much, and tend to do more processing on the images than I used to, so I find Snapseed, Plastic Bullet and FrontView are my go-to apps for pretty much everything I do now.
I don't have a tablet, so the small screen of the iPhone can make it a little tricky, but most good apps are designed with that in mind. I'm quite excited about the larger-screen iPhone 6 that will be coming out later this year, as that'll enrich my mobile photography even more.
One of the things I love about iPhoneography is that it is all contained on the phone, so on my commute to work and back on public transport, or on a long flight, I can go through my pictures and do all the processing of them there and then, rather than having to find time do download files from a camera to a computer and be tied to that to work on them.
Who or what inspires you?
MB: My degree in photography allowed me to study some master photographers, such as Bill Brandt and André Kertesz, which has inspired me a lot in the photographs that I take. For example, Brandt's surreal 'bodyscape' photographs made me look at everyday objects in a new way, and the melancholy in much of Kertesz's work is a common element in mine too.
I also got very heavily into Surrealism and Metaphysical art whilst studying for my degree, and this has greatly influenced me, so I find myself representing objects in a way that slightly removes them from reality, or gives them an other-worldy quality, perhaps.
As I said before, I now constantly look around me everywhere I am and notice details I would never have before, so just the everyday world inspires me, whether it be a tiny sticker on a wall, some flaking paint, an obscure sign, or a lost object in the street - it's all there to be noticed and because my phone is always with me, I can always record it.
I've often shown my pictures to people and they tell me how amazed they are that this thing I've created a photograph of is something they've walked past every day for years and never noticed was there, and how they'll now notice it in future.
Also, life is happening around us all the time and with my phone, I can quickly capture a fleeting moment, an expression, or a scenario you could never have anticipated or planned for, and Cartier Bresson's term 'the Decisive Moment' is very important to me, as it really is capturing a moment that has never and will never happen again, and this is key to a lot of my mobile photography.
Do you plan your shoots or just capture images along your daily routine?
MB: I tend to capture images just as and when I notice something, which is the most satisfying part of it for me, as it's spontaneous and unexpected, and it's usually the seemingly most insignificant and often-unnoticed details in our every day life that can make the most interesting images.
Occasionally, I'll spot something that for one reason or another it wouldn't be easy to photograph at that moment so I'll keep it in mind for next time I'm there, or will go back to shoot it, but pretty much everything I do is unplanned and just occurs when I spot something.
How did Signal Lost, your current exhibition come about?
MB: I had previously made a book entitled 'Snapshots 1' in 2010, which contained many of my simpler 'Polaroid' style images that I was doing at the time, and was recently thinking about doing another one, to collate some of the more stylised images I'd been doing since then.
I'd also participated in an iPhoneography event at the Apple Store in Regent Street, London, in 2011, where myself with 3 other iPhoneographers, presented a slide show of our iPhone Street Photography, and talked about how the images had come about, as well as the benefits of using a mobile phone to capture them, when a bigger, 'proper' camera might not have been suitable or available, and the audience reaction was very good, so it highlighted what a growing interest there is in this form of photography.
My partner had bought a café/restaurant in London in 2013 and was thinking about using the space to display work by local artists, and having discussed this with a photographer that I know, it emerged that London didn't have a gallery or space devoted entirely to showcasing mobile photography, whereas cities such as Paris and New York do, so this seemed to be the perfect angle to take on it, as the Instagram revolution continues and, what with the restaurant being called 'Niche', it fitted well with this niche of photography.
We're very proud that we have created a space devoted to showing mobile photography in London, which we hope will support and also be supported by the mobile photography community here and beyond.
The plan was to collaborate with several other mobile-photographers to create an exhibition there, but as time went on, and having never curated something like that before, we decided that I'd kick things off with a solo show, and that gave me the forum to collate my favourite pictures that I'd taken in London, which became 'Signal Lost', with the next exhibition hopefully being a more collaborative effort.
The title came from those very words I noticed spray-painted on the pavement/sidewalk somewhere in London, and it really resonated with me, as it seemed so mysterious and melancholy, and was obviously intended for a cable engineer or someone like that to denote something technical in the street for the purposes of some work to be carried out, but I loved how esoteric it was and how some signs or messages left around us only mean something to maybe one person or a very select few.
I was always fascinated with the idea of 'Mystery' while I was at college doing my degree and things like barcodes, ambiguous objects and unfathomable signs always caught my attention, where some hidden meaning lurked beneath the surface.
How many pieces are exhibited? What format was used to display your work?
MB: There are about forty images exhibited in the venue, and I considered how to display them very carefully, finally deciding that smallish prints with no border, but a solid black frame would suit my images the best, and how I would like them presented.
Nearly all of my pictures are square, and I like to apply a messy black border to them in my phone, so replacing that with the square black frame worked well, and I decided against a white border, to give them more of a self-contained 'instant' feel.
I'm very pleased with how they look on the wall and with the presentation choices I made, which wasn't easy to arrive at.
Following many positive comments from customers at the restaurant, about my pictures, I decided to produce a book of them, also titled 'Signal Lost' (with about twenty extra images included too) to accompany the exhibition, which people can buy from my website.
Are they for sale or just for show?
MB: Prints are for sale, yes, from the website I created for 'Signal Lost', as well as the book I made to accompany the show, which I am very pleased with.
What advice would you have for iPhoneographers who wish to exhibit their own work?
MB: The hardest part for me, in doing this, was editing down hundreds of images which I'd created, most of which I loved for one reason or another, into just forty for the exhibition (the book gave me an opportunity to include some more), but it did help me to focus on what makes an image work, whether that would come across to other viewers, and what would work cohesively as a set of images.
So, I would say to think carefully about your images, try to remove yourself from an attachment you might have with the occasion that you shot a picture, or something special that maybe means something to you but someone else might not get, and think about what images would convey something about what you want to say, or work together to tell a story of a place, perhaps.
In 'Signal Lost', all the images were shot in London, many of which were on the London Underground, and these run through the set as a theme, exploring textures, details, quirks or human moments on the Tube that most people probably don't notice in their every day lives.
Also think carefully about how to display them. Too small in a place like a café or restaurant, and people will have to lean over tables to be able to see them. Too big, and you might take away some of the intimacy of the images, as well as expose any technical limitations a mobile phone camera will have.
It's also good to have posted images to sites such as Flickr because that can give you a good idea of which ones resonate the most with other viewers or which don't really come across that well, even if they mean a lot to you, and this will help create a cohesive set that will be engaging and capture the imagination of your viewers.
Try to go to Instagram shows and other mobile-photography exhibitions as much as you can and see what works and what doesn't work, how images have been sequenced and presented and use this to make your own exhibition the best it can be.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
MB: Just to say thank you to Geri for her interest in my iPhoneography and for featuring me in her blog, and that if any readers are in London over the summer, do come in and have a look at 'Signal Lost'!
Sunday, November 8, 2015
MobileMagic XI Selections Announced
Congrats to Eduard Kurganov for receiving the Juror’s Award for “Soap Dream” in the latest MobileMagic selection, MobileMagic XI. I was also pleased to have two of my images selected.
Here's more information on MobileMagic from the website:
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Read more »
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| The Blue Violin |
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| Fuschia |
MobileMagic is a monthly exhibit for display in the Lightbox Photographic Gallery and online, opening during our regular Second Saturday Monthly Openings. Each month we display archival pigment prints of the top 25 juried images, selected by a renown juror from the photographic community. LightBox will print every submission, that’s right, every single submission, not just the juror’s top 25. All are printed as a 100% archival rag pigment print and mailed to the photographer. A Juror’s choice will receive a $50 cash award.
The top twenty-five images chosen by the juror will be displayed on the wall of LightBox starting on the Second Saturday of every month, posted on the LightBox website and mailed to the photographer after the show.
The twenty-five juried images will remain in an online gallery for one year and will be available for sale at the set price of $35. The photographer will receive a paypal payment of $25 every time their image sells. Prints are printed by LightBox using 100% cotton rag stock and archival pigment inks, on paper size of 5.5” x 8.5” and mailed to the buyer.
Every image and print is the creative property of the photographer. LightBox retains no rights to use your image other than to offer your image for sale in the gallery and online for a period of one year from the date of the opening of that months exhibit. You may choose to notify the gallery that you do not wish to offer your image for sale.
The online gallery will be posted on the Second Saturday of every month where you can see if your image was selected into the exhibit for that month!
For a complete list of winners and for a better view of each of the twenty-five monthly winners, please click on the image below:
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| MobileMagic XI |
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Monday, November 2, 2015
International Mobile Photography Exhibition in Poland
The Polish mobile photography community is a vibrant and creative one. I'm happy to share details of an upcoming exhibition. Details provided by Grupa Mobilni.
International Mobile Photography Exhibition
"Slowing down ~ The tales from our streets and backyards”
Opening:
October 18, 2014
Venue:
Community Centre "Słońce”
Osiedle Przyjazni 120
Poznan, Poland
Poznan, Poland
Organizer:
Mobile Photography Enthusiast Group “Mobilni”
Mobile Photography Enthusiast Group “Mobilni”
Exhibition description:
The city pulse is always on. Be it the clamor of cars, live stream of people or the scent of fast food. We — the city citizens — mostly pacing through the streets and districts in a constant hurry, rushing to offices, schools and shops. Always pressured, seldom able to admire other signs of street life: street musicians, people on benches lost in their thoughts, couples in love, totally absorbed in their intimate talk, people who resist being carried away by the rapid current of the rushing crowd. Thanks to them, the city can pause for a split second and let us breathe again. "Slowing down. Tales from our streets and backyards” is the first international mobile photography exhibition organized in Poland. One hundred photos made with smartphones, showing our everyday life through the prism of thoughtfulness, holding back and calm. At the exhibition you will be able to see photos of mobile photographers from the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Germany, USA and of course — from Poland. You will see photos from such great photographers like Thomas Kakareko, Greg Schmigel, Emil Pakarklis, Philippe Gonzalez, Moritz Möller, Richard "Koci” Hernandez, great Italian photographers from GoodFellas group, photographers from a former group "Opojeni” and photographers from the "Mobilni” group.
The city pulse is always on. Be it the clamor of cars, live stream of people or the scent of fast food. We — the city citizens — mostly pacing through the streets and districts in a constant hurry, rushing to offices, schools and shops. Always pressured, seldom able to admire other signs of street life: street musicians, people on benches lost in their thoughts, couples in love, totally absorbed in their intimate talk, people who resist being carried away by the rapid current of the rushing crowd. Thanks to them, the city can pause for a split second and let us breathe again. "Slowing down. Tales from our streets and backyards” is the first international mobile photography exhibition organized in Poland. One hundred photos made with smartphones, showing our everyday life through the prism of thoughtfulness, holding back and calm. At the exhibition you will be able to see photos of mobile photographers from the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Germany, USA and of course — from Poland. You will see photos from such great photographers like Thomas Kakareko, Greg Schmigel, Emil Pakarklis, Philippe Gonzalez, Moritz Möller, Richard "Koci” Hernandez, great Italian photographers from GoodFellas group, photographers from a former group "Opojeni” and photographers from the "Mobilni” group.
About Mobile Photography Enthusiast Group “Mobilni”:
“Mobilni” is an informal group bringing together mobile photo enthusiasts from all over Poland. Despite the distance, what unites them is the passion to take pictures of street life using their smartphones. The group actively promotes mobile photography in Poland and abroad, hosts photo contests, exhibitions, photo walks and supports local photo initiatives and select Polish mobile photographers. The members of “Mobilni” are award-winning mobile photographers, with trophies from major mobile photography competitions like “Mobile Photography Awards”, “IPPAwards” and winners of mobile photography contests organized by popular photo portals and blogs. The group is recognized for hosting photo exhibitions in Poznan (Old Brewery), Murowana Goslina (Palace Gallery), Wroclaw (Roman House), Krakow (Indalo Gallery), Kolo (Community Centre) and Bielsko-Biala (Gallery B&B).
“Mobilni” is an informal group bringing together mobile photo enthusiasts from all over Poland. Despite the distance, what unites them is the passion to take pictures of street life using their smartphones. The group actively promotes mobile photography in Poland and abroad, hosts photo contests, exhibitions, photo walks and supports local photo initiatives and select Polish mobile photographers. The members of “Mobilni” are award-winning mobile photographers, with trophies from major mobile photography competitions like “Mobile Photography Awards”, “IPPAwards” and winners of mobile photography contests organized by popular photo portals and blogs. The group is recognized for hosting photo exhibitions in Poznan (Old Brewery), Murowana Goslina (Palace Gallery), Wroclaw (Roman House), Krakow (Indalo Gallery), Kolo (Community Centre) and Bielsko-Biala (Gallery B&B).
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