Have iPhone, Will Travel ~

Here's a project that has captured my time and my imagination. Call it what you will: Found Art, Street Expressionism, or what my friend and business colleague Dave Carsten calls it, POV art. Point Of View. Indeed, it is how you look at it. Just some peeling paint? Graffiti on a trash bin?

What I do know is this, that yes: beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but you have to look for it and see it.

This is why our smartphones have become a valuable expressive tool; even though we're photographers, we're not always carrying our cameras around. Heck, when I was apprenticing in the studio so many years ago, I did carry my trusty Nikkormat with me everywhere. I couldn't shoot enough, and every spare dollar I had (depressingly few, but I was all of 21!) went to ensuring adequate supplies of Tri-X and Kodachrome.  I did this less and less as the years went by and other worldly pressures began to bear down.

So now I'm inspired, by my trusty iPhone and my inspirational friends, to get out again to look, to see, to be immersed. My studio partner Whitney, as usual, is a motivating force to be reckoned with. And our mutual friend Bryan Welsh, from Moments In Time Photography in Hillsboro Oregon, has definitely kicked us both into a higher gear. Besides being a considerably talented photographer, Bryan is also an impressive motivator and public speaker. Whitney turned us on to #finding_inspiration, an Instagram hashtag, as a place to find and submit our iPhone pictures. You should check it out.

We've used our blog posts as ways to suggest photo challenges (and my apologies that this site was down for so long) and I offer this one to you as well. It has no end time, no prizes, but it's the biggest one yet, and one that I will give to myself every day:  Get the heck out there and look, see, feel, live, and ... take the shot. Share it here or on Instagram. 


It'll make you feel good, and we'd definitely love to see what inspires you.

Later, amigos!