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October 31, 2015 by Kat

Late Sunrise (New Stackables Formula)

Time changes tomorrow! Don’t forget to move your clocks back tonight. I am personally very happy to get that hour of morning light back. It’s been hard to get out and hike in the mornings and still get in to the office at a reasonable time. I have to get out on the trail before sunrise, so I’ve seen a lot of sunrises lately.

This has made for some interesting autumn photographs in the early morning light, though. And I’ve been enjoying some of the heavily textured nature looks I’ve been seeing around Instagram, so I created this Stackables formula called “Late Sunrise” that I’m sharing with you today.

To download the “Late Sunrise” formula for your own use, do the following:
1. Make sure the Stackables app is installed on your iOS device.
2. On your iOS device, download the formula file from this link. (This is a Dropbox link, and you may be prompted to save the file to your Dropbox account, if you have one. Go ahead and save it to your Dropbox and then download from there.)
3. When you go to download or open the file on your device, use “Open in…” and choose the “Open in Stackables” option.
4. Stackables will open and ask if you want to import the formula, click “Import.”
5. To use the formula, load a photo and then go to Favorite Formulas (the ones with a heart!). You will see the imported formula there.

Here is the original photo, before applying the formula. Big difference, huh? I just love what you can do with post-processing!

Here are a couple of different images, using the same formula…

For this next one, I modified a few of the layers, removing, lightening and/or rotating them. Don’t forget that you can continue to make adjustments after you apply the formula! It’s one of the great features of the Stackables app.

Today sunrise was at 7:47am where I live. It was the latest sunrise until late December/early January, so I get a little reprieve on the morning light. I don’t know how those of you further north do it in the winters! People around here complain about the rain, but I think it’s the short days that get me the most. 

I’m very happy to “fall back” to tonight!

Filed Under: Mobile Tutorial, The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: autumn, Corvallis, mobile tutorial, Stackables app, stackables formula

October 17, 2015 by Kat

On the Other Side (Mobile Tutorial)

I have been loving the recent change of season. Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. It’s the combination of light, color, and emerging bare branches which inspire me creatively. It’s been fun to get back into editing and experiment with a few new techniques, so it’s time to share a Mobile Tutorial from a recent edit.

I created this piece, “On the Other Side,” yesterday morning and it’s the perfect candidate. I was looking to see how abstract I could go and still retain the feel of the light on leaves. I like the balance of contrast, color and abstraction I was able to achieve in the final piece.

Autumn Corvallis Oregon iPhone Photography Kat Sloma

Here is how I created it…

I started with an image captured in ProCamera with the iPhone 6s. (If you missed it, see my first impressions of the iPhone 6s here.) I composed for the lines of the main branches, knowing I could eliminate the branches from the tree behind in post processing.

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My first step in post-processing is eliminating those extra tree branches using Handy Photo.

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Next step is start altering color and effects. The colors are just too… real. I altered the color using the Tone effects in iColorama. This is an amazingly full-featured app that I am trying to use more. You can get lost in it, there are so many effects and options.

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Continuing with artistic effects in iColorama, I experimented with different effects and ended up here:

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I liked the shapes and the smearing of the color, but this has gone too abstract. You can no longer tell what it is. Time to reign it back in by blending with other images. To create some alternate images for blending, I started with Autopainter, one of my go-to artistic apps, on the toned image from iColorama:

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And also ran the toned image through Autopainter II, for the chalk effect:

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Now it’s on to blending using Image Blender. First, the iColorama output with the Autopainter output:

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And then with the Autopainter II output:

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It’s getting there. There are several problems I need to fix:
– The leaves are still too abstract, so I want to add some shape to them.
– The color is too blue-purple, so I want more warmth.
– The bottom open area of the image is too patchy, with some abrupt transitions, so I want to fill it in a bit.

I can solve the first problem, the abstraction, by blending the image back with one of the original photographs to add the structure of the leaves. Then, I can use color filters and textures to shift the color and fill in the open area. To do this I used a couple of texture apps in sequence. First, textures in XnView Photo FX. You can see how the color has started to shift and the texture has evened out the background.

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And finally, with Radiance and Grunge layers in Mextures, adding further texture and shifting color to achieve the final state:

Autumn Corvallis Oregon iPhone Photography Kat Sloma

I just love the transformation you can create with a few apps on a photograph. It’s magical!

If you would like to learn more, you can preorder my book on Amazon, Art with an iPhone: A Photographer’s Guide to Creating Altered Realities. It includes information on these and other apps, tips on blending, and much, much more. Thanks for your support to make the book a success!

Filed Under: Mobile Tutorial, The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: Autopainter, autumn, iColorama, Image Blender, mobile tutorial, procamera

October 1, 2015 by Kat

Speaking in Portland area tonight!

Tonight I will be speaking on mobile photography at the Ledding Cultural Forum in Milwaukie, Oregon. Come on out and say hello!

Ledding Cultural Forum
The Pond House at the Ledding Library
2215 SE Harrison Street, Milwaukie, Oregon
Thursday, October 1
7 to 8pm

You can read an article the Clackamas Review did on me and my thoughts about mobile photography here.

  

It’s been a busy week for me in the studio! Got my iPhone 6s Friday, had a great Fall Festival art fair over the weekend, received the galley proofs for my book on Monday, and the talk tonight. Whew! 

This image is one of the first I’ve created with the new iPhone. I’m loving it! More details on that later, when I have a bit more time. 

If I don’t see you tonight, have a great weekend!

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: autumn, Portland, speaker

September 8, 2015 by Kat

Time of Transition

Can you feel it? Change is coming.

I can feel it on my skin, through the chill in the morning air.

I can feel it in my family, through the words floating around my house… Schedules and homework and supplies and lunch money.

And I can feel it stirring deep in my soul, through the shift of my artistic focus.
  
I’m going inward, taking the time to tend to the inner landscape, preparing myself for the darker, quieter days and months to come. Perhaps I’m preparing myself to create the art to come as well.

I feel it, deep in my bones. Change is coming. 

I am ready. Are you?

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: autumn, change, tree

December 4, 2014 by Kat

Paris, anyone?

Hey, will you by chance be in Paris today or tomorrow? Yes, I mean Paris, France.

If so, you can catch my art in Création (Photographique) Mobile, a digital exhibition being presented at L’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, (Paris), during the international symposium “Arts and Mobiles.”

I am very excited and honored to have been included in this curatorship. The show includes a wonderful range of creative art from mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and even drones. I encourage you to review the selected work here.

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“From one season to another” is the piece on display. It’s really funny to me how these things sometimes happen. It’s all in the timing… I just recently created a new technique, combining apps to get this interesting painterly outline/bleed effect. I just happened on the call to artists when I was looking around for something else. I just happened to have a few minutes to send off an application.

And now my work is being shown in Paris! I am a bit floored by the whole thing.

I’ve continued to explore this technique, trying it with different types of images. You can see a few in my Flickr Photostream. I like it with these specific autumn tree images best. There is something about the beautiful color variation that is achieved, the vibrant combination of yellows, greens and reds, along with the delicate structure in the leaves which really clicks for me.

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I look at this recent work and think how far I’ve come in my art over the past few years. If my three-year-ago self ran into this piece, she wouldn’t recognize it as her own. I could not have foreseen this direction, this work. I could only experience it along the way; observe it real time.

Too bad I can’t observe it from Paris this week! 🙂

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: autumn, exhibition, France, Paris, tree

November 27, 2014 by Kat

A Thanksgiving Wish (no deals attached)

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Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

That was going to be all I wrote. But this morning as I sat here, reading the barrage of Black Friday emails offering me deals a day early, I started to get frustrated. So many stores are opening early this year, on Thanksgiving. Apparently, all of the online stores are following suit. Couldn’t miss the opportunity to make a dollar or two, now could we? I hate to see this wonderful holiday of gratitude, one of the few days we all celebrate together in this country, regardless of religion or background, taken over by consumerism.

And then I realized, the best way to prevent this from happening is if I don’t spend money today. Don’t browse websites and order from home, don’t visit stores for those early deals. Just don’t engage. If businesses didn’t make money by doing this, they wouldn’t do it.

We, the consumer, can make or break this day for the retailers. Vote with you wallet and don’t shop today if you want to keep Thanksgiving as its own special day. It’s the only way we are going to keep Thanksgiving from becoming the new Black Friday.

So I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving, full of family and friends, good food and safe travel. No strings, or early Black Friday deals, attached.

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: autumn, leaves, Thanksgiving

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