DEAD FLOWERS ON MY IPHONE

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 Theses images came about from a combination of several factors. The first was I wanted to find out what all these kids were doing on their phones. They seemed very engaged and making all  a lot of content, and very quickly. I did not understand. How did they see this little tiny devise as a legitimate professional tool? It was too small! 

 

My background and training in the creative media space is using big expensive heavy stuff. Bulky but beautiful cameras, burning hot lights, tape recorders for a weight gym. Studio space. Massively expensive and time sensitive edit equipment rooms. Big slow digital storage devises. Proprietary software with access to only a few of the creative elite. Anything smaller faster and cheaper I was suspicious of its legitimacy. An acceptable image with such a small lens? A decent resolution? EDIT ON YOUR PHONE!!! You gotta be kidding me. That is too easy, and so damn lazy!

 

When covid trapped me in my house, I made a creative project point of trying to COMPLETELY produce something on my iPhone 11. I was still working remotely in broadcast news and was creating frightening statistic graphics and maps every day for broadcast. That theme weighed heavy on  all of us living on the planet during that time. Added to that was my own dark subconscious dealing with a personal loss in my life. Things were brewing.

 

I recall getting groceries during covid was a one of the big events in my quarantined week. Masking and social distancing while buying supplies at the supermarket  and then dropping food off at other family members back door was the big event. I bought flowers for my sister and brought some home and placed them in my kitchen. Over time they drooped and wilted. I had my subject!

 

In my kitchen I shut the lights off, aimed small Led lights from my bicycle  to the frosted glass vase, lit incense for smoke, put the phone into portrait mode, added props, shot the images and manipulated  them into PS Express while sitting on my couch. Looking at my tiny phone screen, something happened with they way I would work from then on. What was gained was ease of use and freedom to explore and the explosion of the quantity of images. What was lost is still being considered.