Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Sometimes photography can be as simple as sharing something that you saw, these clouds caught my attention and I wanted to share.  As simple as that.

I really liked all the font’s that many of the hotels and apartments in Oahu used for their signage as well as the patination of the materials.

Having not painted for several months, I pulled an unfinished canvas from the pile and spent some time today bringing it closer to the level of completion that I wanted.  It was and is not intended to be a detailed painting but for the lack of a better term a simple impression of the sun and it’s light spilling over the top of Mt. Baker while an excavator remains in the shade of the predawn light.  I’ll set it aside again and perhaps make a few alteration before considering it finished.

Yesterday marked two months that I have been taking pictures with my phone and posting them to Mytubo which is a photo sharing site for Android phones.  In that time I have posted just over 500 images and learned a lot about what other people like and don’t like in an image.  The first thing to note is that because the images are small they need to be simple to catch peoples eye.  A cluttered image is likely to be ignored.  The other thing I’ve learned is that what I like and what is liked are two different things, this is a good thing though it gives me the freedom to do my own thing without falling into the trap of taking pictures that you know others will like.  I have to say this with a bit of a proviso because how can you not take pictures for others if you also want them to look at them.  With such a large social application there are bound to be differing opinions about what is art.  In fact there are really multiple communities of people occupying the same virtual space.  There are people who are sharing with their friends trying to out cool each other with post of themselves doing things.  There are people taking pictures of themselves for what must be many different reasons.  There are people taking pictures with cameras other than there phones and posting them.  There is also the group that I consider myself part of and that is people taking pictures with there phones and sharing the world around them.  I think that from within whatever group you belong it probably seems like this is the coolest use of the technology or the right way to do it, but they are all equally valid. 

 Oh there goes the “Like” notification on my phone I better go check what’s happening,  bye but in the mean time here are a few of my latest.

More images from Oahu, this time with buildings as the focus.

Well Polaroid a  week has slipped to something closer to Polaroid a month but as long as I still have some left I will press on.  The scarcity of original Polaroids compels me to post the images no matter how they turn out.  So here is my latest one with it’s mysterious defocusness (it’s my blog I can make up words if I want).

And this is what I saw with my Cell phone.

Among my many trip pictures are some less personal ones that I thought were worth sharing.  These images all have the ocean in common.

On a recent holiday I was struck by the number of balconies at the various hotels and the repeating patterns that they made.  While I didn’t devote much time to photography these were easy and all around.