Featured iPhoneographer: Kimberly Post Rowe
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 10:00AM | Star Rush 
Above: kiss the sky © Kimberly Post Rowe
Kimberly Post Rowe is a naturalist, an observer, who looks intimately. “I am attracted to dead things that aren’t truly dead because they contain spores and seeds . . . hope, the potential for new life,” she says. “I can be in my garden, see a stunning seed pod, capture it instantly, physically interact with it to bring out its inner beauty, and then share it with the world! How cool is that!”
Kimberly, please tell us about yourself:
I've been living in Raymond, Maine, a vacation destination and haven for artists just north of Portland, for 12 years. I have a 15 year-old daughter and an 11 year-old son, both of whom are very creative but in much different ways. I am married to a professional musician, and we have lots of instruments and a professional recording studio.
I run a non-profit called Five Seeds, which offers stress reduction training programs primarily for students and educators. I also teach writing courses at a local community college and write (somewhat) regularly about best teaching practices. My one and only book, A Settled Mind, was published in 2007. I have been working on another for the better part of a year, loosely titled Contemplation and the Arts: Bridging the Gap Between Creativity and Learning. I'm also writing a cookbook. Additionally, I teach and practice Vinyasa yoga.
I enjoy doing so many things. However, I would say that food, water, and music all play starring roles in my life. I'm definitely a foodie in the slow food/eat local/organic sense and have a large organic garden and a gourmet kitchen. I love the ocean more than I can even begin to express, and a lot of my outdoor adventuring involves water in some way, from swimming, kayaking, and canoeing, to sailing, SUP-ing, and just plain beaching it. I have also been playing music since the age of 3 and at one time actually tried to "make it" as a singer-songwriter. Now I play for pleasure and occasionally teach when called upon.
Above: clematis © Kimberly Post Rowe
I admire and like very much your images of the natural word, natural artefacts of the world. Tell us, Kimberly, about how you look at your work in this capacity?
I am a naturalist so it stands to reason that I like to capture the natural world. My home has always had stones, driftwood, shells, bark, seed pods, and other artefacts of nature scattered around. I am attracted to dead things that truly aren't dead because they contain spores and seeds...hope, the potential of new life. Even when photographing growing things, I still tend to focus on the developing seed heads, pistils, and stamens.
Above: flesh of the gods © Kimberly Post Rowe
Kimberly, why do you take photos or make images on your iPhone? How did you start and why do you continue?
My undergraduate degree is actually in fine art photography, but film had become such an expensive process that my passion dwindled over the years. I owned a series of digital point-and-shoots and would borrow friends' and family's DSLRs when I was called upon to do a serious shoot (I freelance as a web/graphic designer and specialize in CD jacket art) but found the hours spent in sitting at a computer using Photoshop to be tiresome and claustrophobic. I definitely missed the physicality of the darkroom experience and the tactile nature of alternative processes that could yield such beautiful and timeless results.
(This is what) I love about the iPhone—it's not just a camera but an image-editing device that is always with me, can conjure up so many different options for every image, and it involves touch. Now I can be in my garden, see a stunning seed pod, capture it instantly, physically interact with it to bring out its inner beauty, and then share it with the world! How cool is that? Suddenly everything I look at is a potential image waiting to be captured and manipulated. I love my iPhone. It has rekindled my passion for making art.
Above: memory of the blessed © Kimberly Post Rowe
What are your favorite subjects to photograph?
I obviously love the natural world, but my eye is always searching out minute details, tiny bursts of beauty that others might not notice. I am partial to botanicals past their prime, textures, and fine hairs on flowers and leaves, and flora framed by open sky.
Above: to see the wind © Kimberly Post Rowe
How would you describe your photographic style?
I am a tactile person who greatly appreciates the tactile nature of app-ing images. I think this translates into my style as well. I like to apply complex textures to my images, creating pieces that viewers can metaphorically feel beneath their fingertips. I don't like the textures to overwhelm the original image, though. Rather, I like them to enhance the details so that the subject becomes almost 3-dimensional. Again, creatively I am thinking about touch. I would like my viewers to perceive the subject as almost extending beyond the 2-dimensional medium, and if they reached out, they might be able to pluck it off the surface.
The late Nacho Cordova referred to me as an "almost-pictorialist" and I think he was probably onto something. To quote him: "(T)hat almost-pictorialist disposition is inflected by a strongly intimate look at the subject, a total contemplation that...looks at the subject deeply and verges on the symbolic. In other words, if the pictorialists sought to imitate painting and capture the vision of the artist as far more lasting and intriguing than the straight subject itself (and the artistic nature of the image), in your work I see the essence of that strong artistic vision—not in a way that overshadows the subject, but which in fact sees the subject deeply and imbues it with deep symbolism."
Above: the blessing © Kimberly Post Rowe
Tell us about what is most important to you in your creative process.
The first the most important part of my creative process is the initial observation. I look deeply and in many ways almost merge with my subject. The smallest of details become prickles on my skin as I feel with my eyes. Capturing and preserving that moment--that sensation--then becomes the most important part and often involves numerous shots to ensure the details are sharp and sometimes means I will pluck the subject out of its natural environment and lay it on the snow if it is winter, hold it up to the sky if the light is right, or bring it home to my light box (built out of my old studio's light table, back when I needed it for negatives).
Then apps become a priority as I decide what the image needs (and sometimes it needs nothing else but the camera app). If I am going to do more to the image, then layers are crucial. This can be a slow process because (as far as I know) no apps handle more than two layers at a time. I typically use Iris, sometimes VintageScene, sometimes Mirage.
I have to add that the social media aspect of the medium has had a huge impact on my creativity. The ongoing conversations on numerous blogs and gallery sites are inspirational and continuously push me to better my work. I tend toward introversion, but it has pulled me out of my shell, with the added benefit of pushing me into the exhibiting world, a place I haven't been in since my 20s.
Above: cultivating the beautiful © Kimberly Post Rowe
Kimberly, what have you discovered about yourself or others as an artist/photographer as a result of your iPhoneography practice?
I discovered that my mindfulness practice and iPhoneography practice have now become one. To explain, mindfulness is the act of paying attention in a particular way, of being present. When I became enraptured of iPhoneography, I noticed that what had once been a purposeful meditation practice using mindfulness was now merging into my creative work. I had rarely experienced this while creating art before. Typically my photography and art-making had been more of an end-product, goal-oriented experience. Now I am always looking around me and noticing details waiting to be captured and when I start app-ing I'm immediately sucked into the flow. My artistic process is now also my meditation practice.
Above: milky way © Kimberly Post Rowe
Tell us about a memorable image (of yours or someone else's) from the last year and why?
There is an artist from Croatia who really inspires me. His website is www.uzengia.com and all of his work is amazing. The one image of his that originally put me over the edge is titled "blame on lullaby".
The environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy is my most current source of inspiration. Visit his website. I HIGHLY recommend watching Rivers and Tides, a documentary about this brilliant man that follows him over the course of a year and is really quite riveting.
Above: her winter’s secret seed © Kimberly Post Rowe
Kimberly, what influences you?
Frankly, I am very influenced by my environment and my senses. For productivity, creativity, and overall good mood, I need to surround myself with beauty (and beauty has many definitions here), as well as wonderful scents and sounds. I listen to music all the time and choose music to suit situations, moods, or creative works in progress. I try livepage.apple.comto stay in the company of positive people and I spend time at the ocean whenever possible.
Tell us, Kimberly, what does iPhoneography mean to you?
It means that every image is shot and processed with the iPhone/smart phone/iPad. For me it ceases to be iPhoneography when an image is manipulated in Photoshop or some other image editing software on a computer, or when an image is taken with a separate camera and imported into the smart phone/device.
I think that iPhoneography as a movement is going to be more and more about any device with a touch screen connected to the internet. I see so many people doing art on smart devices that isn't photo-based but is still considered iPhoneography, so I think it will be less about the camera and photogs specifically and more encompassing of all genres. I do think that, except for street art, the art world has been dormant for awhile, and iPhoneography has woken up a rather dull period, ironically by making art more...proletariat, if you will.
What apps, Kimberly, do you use most and why?
I either shoot with the native camera or Top Camera, with some Hipstamatic as well. I like to process with Iris the most, but also use VintageScene, LoMob, Film Lab, PS Express, Mirage, Retouch, and Phonto. I currently have 79 photo/art apps loaded in my iPhone.
Above: evermore unknown © Kimberly Post Rowe
Kimberly, what’s next for you, any projects?
I have a solo exhibit in Lewiston, Maine, opening for the Last Friday Art Walk on September 30 and up through October: “Mobile Natura: Botanical iPhoneography.” In conjunction with the show, I am going to lead my first iPhoneography workshop the second weekend in October. I am also honored to be the judge in the Plants & Flowers category for the Mobile Photography Awards.
I not only have my own photo blog but have been blogging with two other wonderful iPhoneographer women who also garden. Our blog is iGardens. I do have several iPhoneography projects in the works, including a book and an app, but I'm going to keep quiet about those for now.
See more of Kimberly’s photographs and her writing here on
Kimberly Post Rowe in Interview
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