The iPhoneography blog welcomes Star Rush, our first Interview and Showcase Editor
Monday, June 27, 2011 at 2:00PM | Glyn Evans Recently the iPhoneography blog posted a position for an "Interview and Showcase Editor". The process has been slow [on my part], but I am pleased to introduce the first of our new editors, Star Rush.
For those who know Star, then you will be well aware of her presence in the iPhoneography community, but for those who don't, then I will leave Star to introduce herself.
About Me
My name is Star Rush and I live and work in Seattle. I am a faculty member for a private arts college, where I teach composition, rhetoric, and literature. I’ve been taking photos or writing about images my whole life. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic camera I received for my 8th birthday. I still have those wavy, blurry photographs.
I’ve been recording images with my iPhone for almost 2 years. Having a camera with me all of the time changed my relationship to my lifelong affection for photography. I began to take more regularly photos of what I observed. I began to intentionally observe where I was, who was around me. The iPhone has probably improved my composing and framing, but mostly, it’s improved my observing, through practice.
iPhoneography is about more than a tool or an apparatus. First, it’s photography to me, because I’m interested in recording what is visual; it's always with me. Now I have far less between myself and subjects I photograph, our distance is collapsed. No knobs, switches, or machines between us. I’m often standing next to or in front of my subjects, and I feel an immediacy and spontaneity. There’s no lens in front of my face, blocking me or protecting me from the world and people. I feel like those moments are now differently inclusive. Working with the iPhone reminds me of Haiku or Sonnets; these are forms with limits that push expression into unconventional directions. They push us onto new paths, to innovate. I think of my image making with my fixed lens iPhone 3Gs as making visual Haikus or Sonnets.
There are so many iPhone and mobile photographers engaged in dialogue and image sharing via social media, an important part of the evolving art form of mobile photography. Looking at and commenting on the work of others reveals so much to me about the limitations of my own images. I’m interested in reportage: street and documentary photography because they present the moment between intent and meaning-making. I like recording and describing, and both require editing. I see in frames; some things in and other things out. While I linger over words, I don’t do that with images.
I mostly make images in black and white. My mind and eye are working in shades of grey, the spaces between dark black and bright white. To me, black and white suggests a “unrealness” in the image: “This is not life. It’s a photo of it.” Color unsettles me. I’m overwhelmed. Maybe that’s just me and my way of seeing things or remembering this thing or that thing. We might live our lives in wondrous color, but sometimes, color in a photograph can be so real, I lose myself, or it helps me too well to mask my own emotional moment.
What influences me?
My partner and I have two dogs and one cat. We laugh at the same stuff and, genuinely like each other. I’m a fan of American jazz and blues, especially soul jazz and bebop, and acoustic Delta blues. I collect vinyl records. I wish I had rhythm. I admire the artistic commitment of Nina Simone. I love the painting of Joan Miro. I think Haskell Wexler’s films are beautiful. I’m a fan of irony and understatement. I love old cars, and specifically, American muscle cars. I read Emily Dickinson and listen to The Stone Roses. I like the idea of pulling the past forward, not just leaving it behind or carving it up, or talking about progress as thought it were a bullet train heading for—well, just heading somewhere up ahead. I had a friend tell me I took old-fashioned photographs. I was puzzled. What’s does that mean? I don’t know. I’m just trying to be me, speaking through images, about what I think and how I feel as honestly as I can. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I like trying.
What Apps and Why?
The apps I use for the black and white images are always these, for the last 12 months or so: Native Camera, Camera+, Perfectly Clear, Film Lab, Photo FX. I use to clean up the image and lighten the dark areas. I use Camera+ to darken or lighten images or crop. I use Film Lab for processing to black and white, via Kodak or Illford simulations. I use Photo FX to enhance BW tones even further than what I can do with Film Lab. This is the same process for nearly all photos in BW.
The apps I use for color are the Native Camera, Camera+, Cross Process, Image Lab, and Photo FX. I don't use Perfectly Clear at all on color images. I use these for color for the same reasons I use them for black and white. The addition is Cross Process, and I use it because I like the tones it creates--not overly saturated or over-the-top. I like the subtle vignetting you get with it too, and that soft "white" area in the middle. For color processing, I like Camera+ for its retro filters (especially the warm, vintage ones) and the slider bar that lets me control the degree of application. That's the biggest reason I use Camera+.
I often use ShakeItPhoto, but it wasn't used for any of the images here. When I use it, I don't use any other apps with it. I also only use the Native Camera. It's fast, and I think it takes better focused shots. Nothing yet beats it, in my opinion. Also, I like that it saves directly to the camera roll.
That's it. I don't use other apps or try for other effects such as grunge or special frames, etc. I use the app combos above to achieve an aesthetic color or bw output. I like the images to have a kind of feel, an appearance of imperfection, with blurs, inkiness, and the like, because to me it seems to give them depth (in tones/color). I'm not fond of sharpness.
Editors Comments: I'd like to welcome Star to the iPhoneography blog, and thank her for joining the team, and for her introductory post, which if you have any questions about, I am sure Star will only be to happy to answer.
Star will be regularly bringing interviews with existing and new iPhoneographers to the blog, so keep an eye out her future posts.
Reader Comments (10)
Welcome to the site! Just starting out on iphoneography myself! hope to learn from all of you guys here!
Excellent B&W shots there!
Wish to see some workflow posts from you as well as from your interviews!
It's interesting to see how others are doing it and how the order of apps or effects changes the look of the picture!
Thanks!
I have been enjoying your photography for a long time and I am really glad to know you'll be contributing to these most interesting and informative pages !!
Keep up the great work and, once again, congratulations !!!
I loved your self-portrait in words! Bold, graphic and good bones!
You have a great vision of world around you, and I am very pleased to meet you, you're a great source of inspiration for me. thanks