3/18/2014

Seeing double

13


When I think back on the countless hours spent in darkrooms
attempting to create [at the least] something a little bit  interesting
by combining two disparate negatives into one print,
well, I sit here shaking my head.  Not a time waste exactly, no I wouldn't want to say that,
but I never was very good at it and I never did come up with
a single picture worth hanging onto.


What did happen, I guess, is that I never lost my love for composites
and recently when my faraway friend happened to post a super cool photo she
created with a phone app 
- an app I'd never heard of, one that superimposes two images, adds filters & effects 
all in about three seconds - 
let's just say
I couldn't download that puppy fast enough.



This app, named Diana Photo,
 has what I might venture to call an uncanny ability to "choose" which images
to stack together to bring out the best of both worlds
and in my case, it keeps choosing pairs that feel entirely significant and appropriate
to what I'm doing with life, my work, and how I feel about where I live at this moment.

Silly, really.
Of course an app can't  KNOW  but when Diana began to combine my dye bundles
with sand & sea 
and dyed cloths were superimposed with tree leaves & blossoms ...
you can see my point perhaps?






She even went so far as to match up one of the [rare] front-on portraits of dear dawg
with the driftwood piles on her favorite off-leash beach;
the very same driftwood she played on, photographed on her 4th birthday ...
two photos taken five years apart
from an album numbering in the thousands !

HOW does Diana know???



Tis not all serious stuff, not by a long shot.


Endless supplies of whimsy occur from the combos ...
dawg as evidence,
bedecked here with her own tail ...
all part of the rolling-the-dice fun & darn good for some fine belly chuckles
[although I think dawg would be mortified].



What I'm really after, what appeals most, is the symbolic double vision.
Hard to put into words ...
simplified, it's about taking a subject I've shot in one context,
"randomly" layering it with a subject from another, 
creating a final image that has - somehow - through overlapping effects,
intensified in meaning.

Double exposure.



So far I've had my beaded world appear



and seen my work under water here in this isolated island place I call home.
These have me looking at kinship to tides of all kinds
real and imagined ...

symbolically speaking, that is.






Here I am.
Self portrait within my watery world,
wondering how in the heck a little 99 cent app could have
brought up so much introspection.


:::


Diana Photo app for iPhone is HERE
for Android HERE

:::

Linking up with the gang over at Kim's place for Friday Finds
as this was truly my biggest "find" of the week ...



13 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this, Christi. I love the idea and your thoughts too. You might see me play with this app too!

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  2. Amazing images, sounds like a new toy I might appreciate.

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  3. Fabulous photos! Those photo apps are almost worth getting a phone for! Just kidding...

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  4. silly girl. The Universe speaks to us in a language we can understand. take note! xo

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  5. I love this app
    and
    Am looking forward to an audience with her Fluffiness soon

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  6. What an amazing app. These photos are stunning.

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  7. WOW!! I love it that the superimposed images bring a whole new look and feel to the subject and that your 'story' can be shared in such a beautiful, magical way.

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  8. oh another arrow in your quiver! exciting. I love my phone photo apps and wish/wish that the Photoshop Elements 11 that I use on the PC offered such ease and delivery. I will be buying myself this one - thanks for sharing. BTW, the fact that the darkroom attempts didn't satisfy perhaps speaks to how important tempo of creating and medium is to an artist?

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  9. Wow! this is magic Christi!
    (NB having your brilliant photos for the app to work with has a lot to do with the wonderment)

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  10. Absolutely Amazing! Mo Crow is right, your images are wonderful to begin with, that has a lot to do with the end product. I love your self portrait. I am going to download that app right away. Thanks for sharing it.
    Michelle

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  11. oh gosh everybody, THANK YOU for leaving your super swell messages! It's great
    not living in a vacuum out here, having you stop by for visits. I fell a wee bit behind with everything
    this week so was very neglectful of sending individual responses to your lovely words ... but please know,
    I so appreciate each and every one.

    Christi

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  12. Ok, you convinced me (it wasn't hard)! The app is now on both my phone and iPad and I'm having a blast. I'm a couple of blog posts behind on mine, but will post about Diana soon.

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    Replies
    1. Looking forward to that, Anne Marie!
      [can be kind of addicting ... forewarned is forearmed ;>]

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