This week’s showcase of mobile photography from the Mobiography Flickr Group takes a look at 10 amazing images that have an abstract style or painterly effect to them. This sort of approach to mobile photography is very popular and makes good use of many apps available. These apps allow the artist to capture their images before layering, manipulating and filtering the image to create something truly unique.

Featured photographers include Jo Sullivan, Julie Hollow, AlexVisage iPhoneography, BrandyandWine, Diana Nicholette Jeon, Bobbi McMurry, Riel Noir, Tania Konnerth and Geri Centonze.

Let us know if you have a favourite and in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Rendering

Photo by jo sullivan

Rendering‘ by Jo Sullivan – “The inspiration for the image was nature-based and I wanted a wild rather native look to the piece. Nature is profoundly important to us, so in this self-portrait I took the role of Mother Nature rather sadly/concernedly observing our planet.

Process wise, the piece is heavily layered using other photographs of mine, blended and mixed using iColorama, Lorystripes, Aviary, PhotoToaster and PhotoFX. I generally go back and forth between apps to complete my piece.”

Untitled

Photo by Geri Centonze

Untitled‘ by Geri Centonze – “This photo is of a gentleman my husband and I often see when we take walks around our neighborhood. We have dubbed him “umbrella man” because normally he uses an umbrella instead of a cane as a walking stick. I spotted him going to the local grocery store, so I sat down and snapped his image as he walked by.

To create this piece, I painted over the distracting background with a soft brush and several colors in Sketch Club. I did a bit of tuning in Snapseed and used the Selective Adjust tool to highlight his face. Using Effexy’s Handshake too,l I distorted the image a bit and recombined it with the original image by layering them on top of one another and blending them in Sketch Club. More layering was done using both Diana Photo and Stackables. Photoforge2 was used to filter the image and to highlight the cane and the lighter spots on his face using the Lighting brush. ”

Untitled

Photo by Geri Centonze

Untitled‘ by Geri Centonze – “I enjoy taking photos of random people I see on my day to day errands and seeing what I can create. Normally these images are snapped very quickly while walking so the quality isn’t very good, but with a little mobile magic even a humdrum photo can become something special.

For the woman, I completely reshaped her to make her unrecognizable and then erased the background. To create the shadow, I duplicated the figure in Sketch Club and then adjusted the contrast and brightness to make it look like a shadow. I used the Transform tool on this layer to place it and slightly change the shape to make it appear more realistic. The blur brush in Sketch Club was also used to soften the shadow a bit. The background was added in Sketch Club as well using a texture image from Lil Owls. After a bit of retouching and filtering the image was complete.

Untitled Portrait

Photo by AlexVisage iPhoneography

Untitled Portrait‘ by AlexVisage iPhoneography – “I am a photographer. I am an artist. I’m always looking for new ideas and inspiration. My experiments in the field of iPhoneography led me to the idea of creating a ‘Untitled Portrait’. Often my ideas out of reach, they are hidden somewhere deep in my mind and that is what I wanted to show in this work.”

Two of Them

Photo by BrandyandWine

Two of Them‘ by BrandyandWine – “I always touched by energy of flowers. They are so powerful and make me feel alive. Those Ranunculuses are out from a bouquet which my friend brought me, and first I was going to shoot some shots of the bouquet. However, when I first put the two of them casually in the green base, I suddenly changed my mind. As they looked like talking, I let them talk.

Hipstamatic and Oggl are always my favorite App. I love taking time for determining filters and lenses. For this work, I used one of my favorite combo; Tinto1884 and Godland. After, I add some vintage effects from StackablesApp then finally add some scratch effect filters of Mextures.”

Louis Meets the Family

Photo by Diana Nicholette Jeon

Louis Meets the Family‘ by Diana Nicholette Jeon – “This work represents an attempt to intersect the current state of mobile photography/art with the history of photography via Mobiography and family history. It is based upon a photograph taken by Lewis Hines. The photo is archived by the US Government here.

Hines? notes on the photo are as follows: “Spinners. Smallest girl – Pearlie Turner, 408 East Long Ave. Been at it 3 years and runs six and seven sides. Her Sister (largest girl) runs only four sides. I found other cases where youngest sister did much more work than oldest and family stimulated her by praising her speed and the other’s slowness. Location: Gastonia, North Carolina.”

I have replaced the faces in the image with the faces of deceased women from my Greek immigrant family history. In creating this work, I began with the Hines image, and put it through 49 different states before it finally was finished to my liking, and to where it spoke to the differences with mobile and traditional.

The apps I used on the iPad were Procreate?, ?Pixelmator?, ?iColorama?, ??PixiteShift?, ? and Faded?. There was a lot of back and forth and creation of sub-states to serve as layers in the layered Procreate/Pixelmator PSD formatted file.”

Follow Me at U’r Peril or Delight

Photo by Riel noir

Follow Me at U’r Peril or Delight‘ by Riel noir – “When walking my dog in the park I find myself photographing this same spot at the top of the hill over and over again. Different seasons, different light, different times of day. On this occassion I wanted to place a figure, without clarity, that provides an element of mystery, of the unknown… a figure of intrigue that might draw one to approach, but, with unknown consequence.”

Red Echo

Photo by Tania Konnerth

Red Echo‘ by Tania Konnerth – “This picture wasn’t really planned the way it turned out, it was more like a surprise by chance. The basic photo for “Red Echo” was a picture of a orange california poppy, which I liked very much even in the original version. I took the original photo with Hipstamatic (Sergio + Blanko 1) and started fooling around with the app Diana, because I wanted to see where it would take me. Randomly it was combined with a red poppy (which I also took with Hipstamatic, same combo). I probably wouldn’t have tried it deliberately, but I immediately loved the “visual echo” of the two poppy flowers: the new red which was produced out of the orange and deep red of the different blossoms and the almost black&white background. ”

Self Portrait

Photo by Diana Nicholette Jeon

Self Portrait 2.14.15‘ by Diana Nicholette Jeon – “The image is part of my 365 Project Facebook Group. On January 1, Armineh Hovanesian invited me to participate in this group she started, and the quality of the participants is amazing. So not only am I trying to push myself to do a new photo or mobile art work each day, but I am trying to keep the quality of them as strong as the work everyone else is doing, too. So it?s a double personal challenge.

I do a lot of self-portraiture work. At first (and we are reaching back to the late 90?s,) I did it because the only model I had was me. Later on, as I got more accustomed to it, I found that it was a great way for me to express my emotions and opinions, so I kept on with it for that reason. Now, the majority of my work, whether photo or art, involves being my own model.

In this one, it was a serendipitous thing. I was trying for a certain, blurred look, and in trying for that, I worked on the images in several apps. Frequently, the Dali set in Oggl is not useful to me for my style of art, but in this instance, moving the larger sized images around with the random overlap of the filter resulted in this look, which was exactly what I was trying for…a sort of blurred, happy mystery in the woman?s image.

I shot this image using the native camera app of the iPhone 5s and the front facing lens, and used Hipstamatic Tintype, Stackables, Mextures, Focallab, Oggl to bring about the desired changes to express what I wanted.”

Shadow Dancing

Photo by Julie Hollow

Shadow Dancing‘ by Julie Hollow – “Firstly I should say that I wanted to have a go at a fruit still life as I had never done one before. I set the 3 pears up in lovely afternoon light with some shiny purple fabric draped over a box. I shot from many angles (iPhone 4s) and my final view was from above. The shadows really caught my eye. Apps applied were Snapseed to crop and tune, Impresso for a painterly effect, Glaze the Impresso (many versions blended), Superimpose to blend Snapseed and glaze versions (to bring a bit more reality back). Then I used Shift to add nice lighting followed by Stackables for some extra texture. I could have stopped there but I wanted to push it a little further so added the paper folds from Scratchcam.”

Peach

Photo by  Bobbi McMurry

Peach‘ by Bobbi McMurry – “This self portrait was created for the APPart Color Challenge/Color of the day. This piece is about femininity and the beauty we must find within. I’ve chosen tulips because they are both gentle and strong – sort of how I view myself. Its created through extensive layering, drawing, painting, and removing of the image to give it it’s depth. The apps I used were ArtStudio, Leonardo, Image Blender and Stackables.”

Which was your favourite?

Do you have a favourite from this weeks selection? Let us know your thoughts on the featured photos in the comments below.

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