The event is hosted by the non-profit organization, RAW: natural born artists, which works to promote local artists. As such, there is a $10 RSVP charge, but given all of the entertainment for the evening I would say that it is well worth it!

Please come out and support me and other local artists. The event takes place on September 23rd between 8pm and midnight. This is an invite only event and you can’t get tickets at the door so please click on the poster below and hop on over to secure your tickets for an unforgettable night of art, music, fashion, dance, drinks and great people!

Photo Manipulation:

True HDR: There are quite a few HDR apps in the iTunes store these days, but my favorite is one called True HDR. It seems to have the most simple and intuitive design. You simply hold the phone steady while the application prompts you to touch on the bright area of the frame followed by the dark area. The algorithm combines both exposures to provide you with a “blended” image that has a surreal and vivid quality that is all the rage with HDR enthusiasts these days.

Pano: Pano is by far the most intuitive and easy-to-use panoramic-creating application available.  When you snap the first photo you simply pan to the right or left and a ghost image of the first shot appears.  You align the edge of the second image with that of the first, etc. and keep snapping until you have covered the landscape or area that you want within the final image, which is saved to your iPhone’s image library.  Voila!  Simple as that.

Photogene: This app is like having a mini-Photoshop in your pocket wherever you go.  With Photogene you can make adjustments to color, levels, contrast, exposure, sharpen, crop, rotation and many other elements of the pictures that you take with your iPhone on the go.

TiltShift Generator: Any photographer familiar with a view camera or tilt-shift lens for an SLR knows the fun of being able to manipulate the focal or perspective plane.  This app won’t touch the latter, but it will replicate the tilt applied to the focal plane.  For the layperson, this creates a miniature-type effect and allows you to focus on a plane that runs perpendicular to the lens as well as parallel to it and any angle in between.

Photo Filters:

Hipstamatic: Even those without an iPhone are probably familiar with the Hipstamatic app at this point. It has developed quite the cult following, but all for good reason. Hipstamatic mimics the aesthetic qualities of several analog film formats. You can swap out the lens, flash or film on your virtual film camera for some great vintage effects. It is definitely worth a whirl.

Camera Bag: Camera Bag provides a very simple way to convert your iPhone photos with some classic looks like Polaroid, Holga, Lolo, magazine-style, infrared, fisheye and several others.  For more control, use the options panel to set camera behavior, image size, cropping, border effects and more.


Lo-Mob: Like the previous two filter apps, Lo-Mob uses a digital process to replicate the film look of the past. Unlike the previous two apps, Lo-Mob allows the user to choose from 28 different effects and variants that are less about achieving the typical, sometimes cartoony effect of film types, but more about the subtle differences between slide films for example. Film nuts will appreciate this app.

Professional Tools:

DSLR Camera Remote: Wow! How do I describe the power behind this app? I have been using the DSLR Camera Remote by OnOne for more than a year now and there is still nothing else like it for a mobile device. With this app you can remotely fire your Canon or Nikon DSLR from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch as well as adjust camera settings like shutter speed, aperture, white balance and more. You can also look through your camera’s viewfinder remotely. This tool is invaluable for studio setups where you don’t want to leave the set or disengage from your subject to hide behind a camera. It is also great for securing the camera to some hard to reach places like the top of a basketball backboard.

Strobox: If you work with studio strobes and equipment then you know the value of documenting the lighting setup for future shoots or your photographic record. Strobox makes it easy to create a lighting diagram on the fly using graphic representations of softboxes, beauty dishes, diffusion panels or just about any studio lighting tool or modifier. You can either save the picture to your iPhone library or email it to yourself or others. This app is a must for educators and professional photographers alike.

Photographer’s Assistant: Photographer’s Assistant is one of those applications that make you wonder how you functioned in life before it existed. Here’s how it works: You log your photographic equipment like camera bodies, lenses, laptops, CF cards, tripods, etc. You then create equipment lists like architecture, wedding, nature, portrait, and so on. When you go on an architecture shoot you bring a certain inventory of equipment versus that of a wedding for instance. You assign equipment to said lists and when you pack for your shoot you simply go down the check list. Photographer’s Assistant has also been helpful for me to keep a current equipment list of all of my photography gear for insurance purposes. It is a fantastic app that I use on a very regular basis!

Sun Seeker: Sun Seeker provides the kind of technology that you wouldn’t have even dreamt of ten years ago. The app uses GPS and your iPhone’s magnetometer to find the correct solar position and path for your current location. You then hold up your phone and using the camera along with 3D augmented reality it shows you what you are looking at live with an overlay view displaying the sun’s current position and path with hour points marked. You can scan a room or mountain ridge in the middle of the desert and see exact when and where the sun will be at different times in the day. For architecture photography you can even punch in a future date in a different season and see where the sun will be in relation to windows, trees, buildings, etc. throughout the day. It is very difficult to explain how cool this app is, you just have to try it for yourself.

Just For Fun:

Old Booth: Have you ever wondered what you would have looked like in another era?  With Old Booth you can transform a picture of yourself into a high school photo of yourself in the 20’s or as a dirty hippie.  It is just plain fun and definitely worth a laugh or two.

TimeLapser: TimeLapser snaps a shot automatically every few seconds (or however often you set it to) using your iPhone and compiles them into a time-lapse video.  I used this app on a recent drive to the desert attached to the passenger side visor.  It took a few exposures a minute over the course of several hours and at the end I was able to watch a 30-second video of the landscape changing from city to farm land to forest roads to desert while the framing remained stationary.  It is a pretty cool little toy.  Side tip:  If you want an instant tripod for your iPhone, it fits perfectly in the center of a roll of toilet paper.  Who’d have thunk it?

ToonPaint: ToonPaint is not a filter, but instead an app that converts your photos to a hand-drawn black and white image that you can color in using digital paints. I know that it sounds hokey and I wasn’t convinced initially, but the design is surprisingly impressive and yields very striking results. Click on the icon and check out some of the examples to see what I mean.

Honorable Mentions:

Out of the Blue focuses on the sea. More specifically, I embarked on a photographic study of the widely varied northern California coastline. My intent with this body of work was to strip the San Francisco Bay area’s cliff, beach and coastline areas down to their essential components. I chose not to include many large elements such as architecture or people within the frame. While small remnants of these subjects may appear within the frame, the goal was to pull the viewer’s focus to the sand, surf and sky. It is within this concept of simplicity that we find the real essence of why people are so magnetically drawn to the ocean.

The hero within this body of work is the component of color. Color plays a large role in my work as a whole, but more particularly within this series as the majority of people who live near a coastline commune at the area’s beaches around the transitional times of dawn and dusk. These are the times of day when the shoreline truly expresses its personality. In order to enhance these qualities I used expired transparency film. Transparency film provides an added element of saturation that negative film cannot and using expired film adds an element of the unpredictable. Expired film can cause small or large color shift depending on many factors including storage conditions, film types and the age of the film.

I chose to use the Holga camera for this project because it adds to the overall narrative and aesthetic of the series. The Holga inherently has a color shift that is exaggerated by the expired transparency film and its low-fi plastic lens. The Holga also has a dreamlike effect that contributes to the series by providing a focal plane that drops out around the edges and a heavy vignette that frames the image.

The materials presented at my final thesis review were as follows:

• 16 finished prints, gallery-ready at 10”x15” and mounted in 16”x20” hand-cut mats
• 40-page, hardcover book featuring the series images and written material such as an autobiography, resume, project abstract, thesis intensive discussion, influences, timeline and statement of future plans
• 25-image professional portfolio featuring food, still life and product photography for client review in a leather-bound book with a neoprene case
• Journal of notes and progress kept throughout the three-year project with lighting diagrams and shoot breakdowns
• Archival box for the university’s library containing a presentation book with 8”x10” prints of the work, 3 CDs with digital files of the images for promotional use and a copy of the hardcover book
• Powerpoint presentation defending the thesis

I grew up in Dallas, Texas and as such didn’t have access to the ocean. I have now lived in California for just over ten years and I am still awestruck every time catch a glimpse of the Pacific. At the risk of sounding too much like a San Francisco hippy, there is an inescapable force that the ocean carries with it. When I plant my feet firmly in the sand and allow the tide to slowly wash around me I experience a feeling that is simply too difficult to describe. The mood on the coast is vastly different with each visit. I can go to the same cliff or beach every day at the same time for a week straight and have very different light and character each time.

It is with this background that I decided there is no better place to focus on for my class project than the northern California coast line. I photographed the following nine images within the same week at various spots around the Bay area. The project has since changed slightly and I will post updates throughout the semester, but this is the genesis.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to view Alex Roman’s CGI masterpiece, “The Third and The Seventh” I would highly recommend you take a gander. It breaks down the barriers between photography, filmmaking, computer-generated imagery and architecture. While this project undeniably exists outside the realm of these defined borders, or perhaps between them, one thing is for sure: it is an artistic wonder. One guy (30 years old), on one PC (i7 920) creating beautiful imagery for one year and this is the result. A photographer friend of mine watched this short film, sat in silence for about 30 seconds after the screen had dipped to black and then finally broke his silence by exclaiming, “Well…. what do I do now?” Where does work like this leave photographers when computer-generated imagery can be confused for photography at its best? When you can create the most optimal environment (ie: sky, lighting, wind, shadows) in a computer, how can we as photographers compete with that? If nothing else, I can tell you that this film leaves me with equal parts intimidation and inspiration. Excuse me, I must get out there and shoot some architecture!