In the Blink of an i

Life is full of moments: good, bad, happy, sad. Full of colour and breadth or detail and depth. We have a personal and unbreakable connection with a memory but we make our own judgement of an image. Thanks to the phone camera in our pockets, we are all photographers and this makes us individually responsible for capturing the most incredible moments.

I used to be a dedicated SLR photographer. Having pursued an education in photography (if not a career), I had progressed from several film-based SLR’s to the digital variety. I loved the feel of a full-sized camera, the perceived quality and the flexibility the lens selection and manual controls offered.

The reality was, my eldest daughter Olivia began life with a set of ‘perfect’ photos. I would painstakingly photoshop food from her face and unwanted toys, pieces of furniture or poorly shaped friends and family from my photos – just to aid composition!

By the time my other daughter Hattie arrived on the scene, I had ditched the cumbersome D-SLR and replaced the full digital darkroom with the iPhone in my pocket.

This was a revelation.

I moved from the selection of perfection, to a lifetime of moments. Rather than hoping to capture something whenever I had my camera, I would take 100 casual shots for one visual memory – and that is why I’ll never turn back.

I find being able to photograph the unexpected a far greater reward than a staged set piece. You know when a smile is real, because the rest of the face wasn’t expecting it.

That doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop being a ‘proper’ photographer at heart, or a designer. I love to create, so the moments I capture are the ones I’d like to see – and I have a critical eye. Most shots are edited in Snapseed or Black and many never reach a public audience.

It has never been easier to share great photography with the world. That doesn’t mean I haven’t got myself into trouble trying to do just this during my world travels. I was detained at gunpoint in Beirut for snapping architectural photos where I shouldn’t, I ventured into the most dangerous parts of Moscow to capture street lighting and walked back out – thanks to ignorance rather than travel awareness and I have taken risks for great automotive shots by hanging out of a few car windows, off-roading a Bentley GT and many more.

Smartphone technology moves on every year, but I still use an iPhone 7 Plus. The phone isn’t slow, the battery life is acceptable, and the camera is great. Do I need a new phone? No. Would I like one? I’m an Apple fan, so of course.

Will an iPhone 11 Pro make me a better photographer? Absolutely not. It will deliver greater detail and perform better under lower light conditions. But a phone doesn’t make a moment…

…we do.

You can find all my photo highlights on Instagram if you’d like to follow the journey.

It’s Hip to be Square, but spectacular to be rectangular [updated]

As camera technology changes and social channels multiply, we find ourselves with increasing opportunities to share a visual record of our lives with the wider world. The one constant is the subject matter and how we think about its creative execution. Or is it?

I rarely feel the need to update my blog entries or online articles as they stand as reflections of the moment and passing observations. Occasionally, a product or service upgrade prompts a change of information or time spent with the same requires some additional thought based on a long term review.

I originally wrote the article below as a non-Instagram user, which with hindsight seems a little unfair and ill-informed. All my original opinions still stand regarding composition and over-filtering of images but I'm now sleeping with the enemy… and it's not as bad as it sounds.

The main reason I chose to make the jump was the ability to share. I wanted to broadcast my photography, travels and life experiences through yet another social channel – square or not. I managed to upload 2 years worth of carefully selected 'square-friendly' photos and I'm now up to date.

The photos and videos featured on my other social channels are merely the tip of the creative iceberg. I don't post direct if they won't preview inline so all the rest now lurk on my @activrightbrain Instagram feed.

Here's the original article...

I’m going to be controversial here... I don’t like Instagram. I’m not rebelling against filtered photos or tenuous titling, rather it saddens me that in the quest for the square crop, we’re losing the art of composition.

What do I mean by this? Well, Instagram’s square format is perfect for an avatar but when Twitter’s preview image and both Twitter and Facebook’s header are landscape and Nelson’s Column, the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower all deserve a format to match their stature, square doesn’t quite cut it.

If you want an image with four sides of equal length, it should be because you chose that crop, not because it was the only option available. My header image (above) certainly wouldn't have worked on Instagram!

With a full landscape format, we understand the distance jumped and tell a story beyond the captured moment.

The smartphone and tablet revolution has given us more than digital independence or the office in our pocket, it has equipped us with a still and video camera so we’re always ready to capture the moment. Here’s the thing, the screen is a rectangle with a ratio of 4:3 to 16:9 and beyond. It seems a shame not to use the digital real estate.

A square crop would have forced us too far from the boy on the train or removed the focus of his attention – the castle.

A square format works for video platforms such as Vine (and Instagram) as you can pan horizontally and vertically to capture the full height of a subject or the panoramic vision.

However, in a rectangular viewfinder it’s still the general rule that portrait is better for... portraits and landscape is better for... landscapes. If you really want to be a rebel (or just add impact), try it the other way around.

The landscape format illustrates the sheer scale of the beach without overpowering the surfers with too much sand and sky.

I can’t deny I have an interesting life and I love having the ability to capture every relevant second on my own terms. To prove the point, I recently sold all my DSLR kit as this represented hardware dictating the terms. There were fewer and fewer opportunities for me to carry all the equipment with me yet my phone travels everywhere I go, especially with a waterproof case. The phone won, the DSLR lost.

Some images just deserve a portrait format. Without it, they're topped and tailed or given too much either side.

The upside of Instagram’s popularity is the fact that many more people are taking and sharing great photos, I just wish we weren’t settling for a single format when we’ve had centuries of painting, drawing and photography to show us that life’s more fun when you’re not trying to be square.

Back to The Drawing Board

If my life had taken a few different turns, I might still be painting portraits of the gifted and famous (not always mutually exclusive) instead of playing with gadgets, waving my arms around in front of an audience and helping to design the future. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing this.

It doesn’t hurt to imagine an alternate reality from time to time so I thought I’d consider what I’d be doing if those two worlds had collided. If I’d turned right instead of left and continued on my path to artistic infamy, yet maintained a healthy interest in all things digital. More about my past creative endeavours in Face Time.

Where does one start? I didn’t want this to be a long drawn-out process so I’m not writing full technical reviews of each device. This is about the artistic and emotional rollercoaster, not screen resolution – you can follow the links for more info!

My plan was to test a variety of hardware, from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex. Each had one thing in common – a stylus of some kind, but they all use different methods to communicate with the surface or screen.

All but one device is manufactured by the industry-leader, Wacom. First-up is the Inkling £84.95.

A small black box clips to the top edge of a sheet of paper or pad then monitors the movements of a hybrid stylus/ink pen as you draw on the surface.

In theory, this sounds like a superb way to retain a natural drawing style whilst digitising the results. In practice, it’s actually quite remarkable. Once your sketch is complete, you plug the black box into your computer via a USB cable and download the results to the supplied software. This displays your artwork in staggering detail with the option to export as bitmap or vector files. You can even save an animated movie of your illustration in progress!

I love the freedom and the lack of compromise when drawing. I’d like to see a wireless transfer or real-time screen rendering option at some stage but for the relatively cheap entry point, this is a superb product for preliminary sketches.

Jot Script Evernote Edition £49.95 / $74.95 (plus an iPad!)

Making use of the iPad’s Retina screen and a fine-tipped bluetooth-connected pen seems the perfect combination. It so nearly is, but there’s a fraction of lag evident when using apps such as 53’s Paper (not Facebook’s!), Procreate or Evernote’s own Penultimate. The lag can be overcome by using your finger instead of the stylus, but I’ve never been big on finger painting and the pen’s lag just highlights the shortcomings of this compared to ‘real’ art materials.

Wacom Bamboo (now Intuos Pen & Touch £169.99 / $199)

I wanted to refresh my memory of working with a basic tablet and Wacom’s Bamboo was a cool looking device, with bright colours, interesting textures and a material label at one end to hold the stylus when not in use. My view remains unchanged – I’m still not a fan of the disconnected pen and screen. It has always felt unnatural to me when the result of your input is displayed so far away from the tip of the stylus, despite the fact that I’m perfectly comfortable with a mouse in similar circumstances.

Unnatural or not, here's one I made earlier...

I started this process a while ago and the Bamboo has since been replaced by the Intuos range, a more sober look but it sits comfortably with Apple’s current visual approach to hardware design.

Wacom Cintiq 24HD £2,499.99 / $2,999

Wow. This was my reaction before I even manhandled the Cintiq onto my desk. This really is the big daddy of the digital art world, an enormous 24” multitouch drawing board where the image you create is rendered directly under the stylus, just like a real drawing board or easel.

The large drawing area immediately encouraged me to (quite literally) think big, to take large unrestricted strokes and adopt a freedom of creative expression that required less image zooming than other devices. It all feels right and I’m glad I saved this beast until last as it finally convinced me to plunge back into the art world.

I took my alter-ego as inspiration and created a quick illustration of Apptain America, using a wide range of brushes and materials. Having stepped away from my portraiture for nearly two decades I admit to being tempted to pick up where I left off thanks to the Cintiq (and the Inkling). Wacom offers a smaller mobile version but I’m not interested as they’ve been hobbled by Windows and Android operating systems – they’re not allowed to use Apple’s. I’m a creative so It’s Cupertino kit all the way.

So, do I miss the artistic life I rejected 20 years ago? I miss being able to offer a simple answer to the question “what do you do?” I’m still part of the team that creates amazing things but I’m less ‘hands-on’ than I ever have been. It makes me sad that my wife and children aren’t impressed by what I do and it doesn’t make them proud.

I’d like to change that, so maybe I’ll find more time to sketch and paint in a digital world. I have a hunger to bring faces to life again so I’ll start making my hit list to add to my previous scalps, whoever they may be...

iPod Bless America

If you know me or read my blog, you'll probably be aware of the fact that I'm no stranger to portraiture. The power to capture a fleeting moment of a lifetime's personality is a skill not to be taken lightly. Get the glint in an eye or the slant of a mouth wrong or a mis-angled eyebrow inflection and suddenly, the portrait is of someone else entirely.

This pressure to bottle the essence of an individual then apply the visual entity to canvas holds no greater importance than when the subject is the leader of the free world. When Brandwidth were given the opportunity to work with the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC we naturally (but reverentially) jumped at the chance.

So, how do you approach a project about America's figureheads without going over ground already covered by a number of other iPad apps? Well, we weren't keen to take the route of many whereby they regurgitate Wikipedia entries, shroud them in an uninspiring digital interface then spit them back out into the App Store. Others cater directly to the education market and dress the information appropriately – i.e. they appeal to kids, rather than the wider audience.

We knew we had unique (and official) access to a stunning collection of portraits, original supporting documents and artefacts. This wasn't going to be an exercise in creating 'the ultimate resource of all information about the US Presidency ever'. We wouldn't be using this as our catchy headline.

Instead, we tackled the artwork head-on, literally allowing the audience to get closer to every brushstroke in a Retina environment reminiscent of the gallery itself. This isn't a book, it's not a reference guide, it's a virtual visit to the gallery. Head straight to your President of interest or browse the full collection via the gallery's walls, delving further to discover the First Lady's portrait, historic documents, the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets, FDR's fireside radio broadcasts, 'Portrait in a Minute' video interviews or images of the Presidential pets.

But it's not all brush strokes and gilt frames. We took a light-hearted approach to learning about the facts behind the faces, with some interactive fun in the Games Room: test tantalising trivia, place the President with the quote and even play Presidential pairs by matching the leader to his First Lady. It's a fun way to learn and as we'll be adding more facts with future updates, the content will stay fresh. In four years, we'll even add another President!

But don't wait for another election, you can take part in a popularity contest via the app! We thought it would make an interesting feature to give you all the opportunity to vote for your favourite portrait so we gave each work of art a 'vote' button. The Leaderboard is illustrated live in the app and votes accumulate on our Facebook page to show the outside world if Washington, Lincoln or Kennedy's portrait is flavour (or flavor) of the month.

Our visit to Washington last month for Barack Obama's Inauguration gave us the perfect opportunity to launch the America's Presidents microsite so I'm not going to use any more pixels here when you can find out more there and download here for the promotional launch price of $4.99/€4.49/£2.99 to Celebrate President's Day.

It's great to finally write about a new app but you'd be forgiven for thinking we've been sat around with nothing to do for the past 12 months – our public launch (i)pad has been decidedly empty. Not so, we've been shut behind a wall of NDAs with some stunning clients and partners from Disney and Warner Music to Apple and Intel. There's a busy year ahead for Brandwidth and the wider technology industry and it remains entertaining and frustrating in equal measures as tech pundits speculate about the 'next big thing'.

Perhaps our next app should be The Vatican's Popes as that seems another hot topic right now...