Once again I am pleased to present this years ’24 Mobile Photographers Til Christmas’. It is a series that has been run throughout December for the last couple of years and has always been successfully received. In part, it is to celebrate the forthcoming festive season but also to celebrate another year in the timeline of Mobiography.

In the series I ask 24 hand picked mobile photographers to offer an insight into their work, to reflect on their year gone by or plans for the coming year ahead. Each featured photographer is someone who has inspired or supported me in one way or another during the course of the past year. One photographer will be showcased each day until Christmas Eve in a sort of online advent calendar so to speak.

Today’s featured photographer is Elaine Taylor.

My biggest takeaway about mobile photography this year is…

Photo by Elaine Taylor

Confidence! I end this year far more confident as a mobile photographer than when I started it, and more comfortable referring to myself as such.

2015 was a very positive year for me in terms of mobile photography. In January I found out that I was one of the winners of the ‘ProCamera Shots of the Year 2014’ and more recently I discovered that one of my images was awarded 2nd place in the ‘Others’ category of the iPhone Photography Awards. I also became a suggested user on IG.

I’m really proud of those achievements, but possibly the most significant confidence-boosting moment of the year for me came in January, when I received an email from the people at Pixite inviting me to be part of a small community of Pixite app users they were forming. I have been a beta tester for their apps for some time and really enjoy using their apps, so I was incredibly honoured to have been approached. Being part of that group has provided me with a valuable opportunity to connect and collaborate with some very creative and talented people. It has also encouraged me to think more creatively about my work and has been huge in terms of my confidence, especially when it comes to working with other people’s images. I have approached the few collaborations I have done with a huge dash of apprehension (what if I ruined a perfectly good shot?) but it is becoming easier as my confidence grows.

I created this image as a direct result of my involvement with the Pixite community. The challenge was to create an edit using an original image by Andre Harrison. Here’s the process: I flipped and edited the original image of a building and I blended it with a photo of my son that I’d shot using ProCamera. I used Union to blend the 2 images and remove unwanted elements, Matter to add the football, Tangent for the geometrics in the sky, Stackables to add texture and finally Snapseed for some final tuning.

Connect with Elaine Taylor

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