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 Geri Centonze.
My biggest takeaway about mobile photography this year is…
I am not a great photographer – I am a mediocre photographer. This is a fact made more apparent when I look through the galleries of the many brilliant artists in the mobile photo community. But, I will say that what I lack in skill, I try and make up for with my passion for taking that mundane photo and creating something more. The editing process can take minutes or hours. It can be complete in a quick sequence of steps or something that I come back to over several days until I get the result that tells me I’m finished.
The photo below is an example:
On a hike this year I shot this photo with my iPhone 6. I was captivated with what my eye saw but what the iPhone captured was quite disappointing. My Mission impossible was to try and pull from this photograph the actual beauty of the landscape that day. The main player in this transformation was Snapseed with a little help from Mextures and Noiseware.
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When I see the finished image, it takes me right back to that hike and reminds me why I pulled out my iPhone to snap the photo. I’m learning that the process of editing is something I enjoy more than the shooting or the sharing after the editing is complete. When editing, I lose track of time. I enter that zone of creativity that connects me to my soul. I’m finding that I’m just as content with the result whether or not I share it – as corny as it sounds, the real joy for me is the journey.
In the last few months I have started to experiment more with digital painting both over existing photos and also painting from scratch on a blank digital canvas. I don’t feel the need to limit myself to just mobile photography when it comes to creating. Whatever I can do on my iPad is fair game!
I look forward to 2016 to see how our community evolves and Andy, I know you’ll be right there to chronicle all of it!
Happy New Year!
Connect with Geri Centonze
Art of Mob | Instagram | Flickr | Twitter
Thank you so much for including me in this series. Thank you to the mobile community for inspiring and teaching me!