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Mastering Holiday Photography with Advanced Smartphone Cameras
As the holiday season unfolds, the air buzzes with the spirit of Christmas and the anticipation of a New Year. Amidst this festive cheer, photography enthusiasts, equipped with their smartphones, stand ready to capture these precious moments. Particularly, owners of the latest flagship models, like the iPhone 15 Pro, have an added advantage with the advanced camera features such as the Spatial Video capture and Cinematic mode at their disposal.
While the Ultra Wide camera lens on these smartphones is a boon for capturing expansive landscapes, it may not be the best choice for group photos. The reason being, the edge distortion it may cause. The article advises stepping back a bit to include everyone in the frame, rather than resorting to the ultra-wide lens.
The importance of a clean lens cannot be overstated. A smudged lens can drastically reduce the quality of the photos. It’s recommended to regularly clean the phone’s lens using a microfiber cloth to ensure crystal clear, vibrant images.
For those looking to capture the intricate details of decorations and lights, shooting in RAW offers unparalleled flexibility. The format retains more information, allowing for greater control during post-production editing, thereby ensuring that the festive lights and ornaments are depicted in all their glory.
When it comes to taking portraits, using the longest or telephoto lens promises natural-looking photos. It offers better background compression and subject isolation, making the subjects stand out against the backdrop. The iPhone 15 lineup’s improvements to Portrait mode and the Photographic Styles feature further enhance this effect.
Finally, the article suggests infusing creativity into the frames by adding props such as a Santa cap or positioning the subjects against aesthetically pleasing backgrounds like a decorated Christmas tree. This not only adds an element of fun but also makes the images visually appealing.
These tips aim to help users make the most of their smartphone cameras, combining technical know-how with creative flair to create lasting memories of the holiday season.
Our top 10 art and culture stories of 2023, chosen by arts & culture editor Hannah Silver, include in-depth profiles and photography-book deep-dives, and range from ANOHNI to Nan Goldin, Moomins and messy motherhood. Enjoy our highlights of the year (in no particular order).
(Image credit: Jason Schmidt)
Addiction is a complex beast. It can masquerade as cure, ally or pleasure, but often results in pain. Artist Nan Goldin knows about addiction; she’s been inside it, witnessed it, and documented its many facets. She has also confronted its pain, those who have profited from that pain, and used her platform as a force for reckoning.
Goldin first took Oxycontin (a strong opioid-based painkiller) in 2014 for tendonitis in her wrist. She had struggled with heroin addiction in the 1980s and got sober; this was different, she was hooked overnight. ‘It was the cleanest drug I’d ever met,’ she said in a now-landmark 2018 essay for Artforum, explaining how her life revolved around the painkiller: ‘Counting and recounting, crushing and snorting was my full-time job. I rarely left the house. All work, all friendships, all news took place on my bed. When I ran out of money for Oxy, I copped dope. I ended up snorting fentanyl and I overdosed.’
(Image credit: Photography: Paul Mpagi Sepuya)
In any creative process, there’s a search for that magical moment when you hit the mark. And in any creative process, the stage can be perfectly set – so to speak – yet that special moment never comes. Which is why today’s most sought-after creatives – whether working on a photo shoot, music video, TV commercial or the catwalk of a fashion show – rely on Stephen Galloway as a guarantee to bring the magic. Using the roll of a shoulder, the twist of a head, the exact placement of an arch of a foot, Galloway – featured in our Wallpaper* USA 300 – has pioneered a unique profession as a creative movement director.
(Image credit: Left, ©Moomin Characters. Right, © Tove Jansson Estate)
As a female, queer artist working in the years before and after the Second World War, Finnish artist and Moomins creator Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was compelled to carve out a unique career as a painter, illustrator and, later, author. Her fantastical, rich aesthetic was reflected in her vibrant personality, both of which came together in her rich body of work, which encompasses texts, illustrations and paintings.
Jansson’s eclectic body of work became the subject of a Paris exhibition in autumn 2023, ‘Houses of Tove Jansson’, curated by art institution The Community. Produced both with Jansson’s estate and Moomin Characters, the retrospective examined Jansson’s life and oeuvre and, for the first time, considered her work alongside that of contemporary artists.
(Image credit: Avery Singer ‘Free Fall.’ Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth)
The image of 9/11 is viscerally stamped into collective memory. Media photographs of planes impacting, buildings collapsing, and bodies falling have been so widely proliferated that those who weren’t in New York may feel as though they saw the attack firsthand. Avery Singer’s ‘Free Fall’ at Hauser & Wirth London, coinciding with Frieze London 2023, offered a new perspective. The installation tangles together the artist’s childhood memories of the Twin Towers, in which her mother worked; her own trauma following the attack; and the survivors made famous through widely distributed press images.
Both Hauser & Wirth’s Saville Row galleries were turned, floor to ceiling, into office spaces. One gallery housed a long corridor that wound into the main room; the other, an imposing wall of elevators. The windows were panelled to match those of the towers, with 18in gaps meant to combat vertigo. ‘Corporate aesthetic in the last few decades hasn’t changed that much. It’s all beige, neutral tones,’ said the artist. ‘It’s oppressive and ugly but also calming.’
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Gallery 1957)
Sankofa – the Ghanaian concept of revisiting the past in order to move forwards – was considered in an exhibition, ‘In and Out of Time’, held at Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana, that wove together different mediums, in a questioning of the traditional linear concept of progress.
Curator and Wallpaper* contributing editor Ekow Eshun worked with both established and emerging artists for the exhibition. ‘Very simply with a group exhibition, I’m always looking to connect with artists I’m excited and inspired by,’ he said. ‘In the case of this exhibition that means artists whose work offers imaginative perspectives on time, cultural memory and African diasporic identity.’
(Image credit: Lorenzo Zandri)
Some music glides gently over the skin, Max Richter’s goes straight under it. The German-born British composer’s universe seems to function around slow creativity and contemplation: the gradual, ethereal burn of his music; the slow pace of life inherent in the rural artist residency and recording studio he recently co-founded in Oxfordshire. Slowness appears to be everything, apart from when it comes to the prolificacy of his creative output, and his rise to become one of the most sought-after contemporary classical composers of an era.
Richter grew up in Hamelin, West Germany, and moved to Bedford, UK in early childhood. His creative inclinations weren’t actively encouraged, but music seeped in: from the Victorian-style piano lessons he took from a young age to his parents’ Bach and Vivaldi vinyls, and the surprisingly fertile punk scene in Bedford. His first taste of the avant-garde arrived from an unlikely source: the milkman, who, upon hearing Richter practise the piano, began not only delivering milk bottles to the door but also experimental records. Richter was immersed in the early textures of Philip Glass and the collaged instrumental concoctions of John Cage.
(Image credit: Andi Galdi Vinko)
‘I didn’t have time to prepare for motherhood – not like that’s really possible,’ says Andi Galdi Vinko. ‘I was busy living, loving and building my career. So when the storm arrived I was quite shocked by my vulnerability and my incapacity.’
This opaque sense of shock and quotidian trauma felt to some degree by all new parents has taken shape in Galdi Vinko’s photography book, Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back, published by Trolley Books. In a visual diary of those early months, the Hungarian photographer juxtaposes the mundane with the momentous in a visual mash-up of everything from stitches to blood, milk and midnight Google searches.
(Image credit: © Christina Quarles. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Emma Louise Swanson)
Christina Quarles keeps a folder filled with text documents on her computer desktop: titled ‘thots’, it contains musings on her artistic practice and life. Unpolished and not meant for other eyes, the texts aren’t fully formulated artist statements, but neither are they as personal as a diary. ‘I had a professor who talked about how we need to update drafts about our position in the world,’ the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-raised and -based artist explains. ‘It’s not something that you write once and never look at again; it’s an ongoing drafting process because the world around you changes.’ These thots might never be read by anyone else, but they help Quarles make sense of her life and work within the rest of the world, not unlike her process of creating – puns and all.
(Image credit: ANOHNI)
Born in Chichester, in the UK, musician and visual artist ANOHNI relocated with her family to Amsterdam for a year when she was seven, and later moved to California when she was ten. On moving to New York to study experimental theatre at NYU, she became involved in the city’s performance scene, starting her career as founder of a nightclub collective called Blacklips Performance Cult. In 1995, ANOHNI began staging trans-surrealist theatre as The Johnsons. In 1998, she assembled a group of musicians and performed her first concert as ‘Antony and the Johnsons’ at The Kitchen in NYC. After a world tour, her second album, I Am a Bird Now, released in 2005, was both a commercial and critical success, earning ANOHNI that year’s Mercury Music Prize.
In 2023, ANOHNI announced the launch of her fifth album under the name ANOHNI and the Johnsons, and she was also invited to be associate artist at the Holland Festival. Her lyrical programme included an orchestral performance of William Basinski’s contemplative masterpiece The Disintegration Loops, as well as the exhibition ‘She Who Saw Beautiful Things’, honouring ANOHNI’s former collaborator Julia Yasuda, and offering what she describes as ‘a vision of enlightened femininity and luxuriant androgyny persevering in memory despite existential threat’.
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery)
For the first time in a long time, Neshat has turned her lens to the Middle East and is looking at the subject of sexual assault and captivity in Iran. The powerful new works have her signature motifs – striking photography in black and white, combined with handwritten calligraphy in Farsi – but there is a directness that speaks to her earlier work. She is inspired by the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, and is tackling her subject matter head-on.
Neshat left Iran aged 17 and has lived in the United States since then. She began making art in earnest after visiting Iran in the early 1990s, and has since gained a reputation as an important activist voice as well as a renowned artist and filmmaker. She has directed three feature films, Women Without Men (2009), which was awarded the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival; Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017); and Land of Dreams (2021).
Renee Robyn: Canada’s Beacon at the 2024 World Photography Cup
Edmonton’s digital artist, Renee Robyn, stands on the precipice of international recognition as she prepares to represent Canada at the 2024 World Photography Cup. Known for her enchanting composite artworks brought to life through fantasy inspiration, Robyn’s artistic prowess has ensured her nomination in not one, but two different categories — illustrative digital art and illustrative portrait art.
Robyn’s childhood was steeped in the realms of video games and fantasy novels. They would later serve as the springboard for her artistic endeavours. A last-minute decision to participate in the competition, encouraged by her partner and fellow artist, Curtis Jones, led her to submit five of her best works. As the judging process unfolded, four of her submissions were eliminated, leaving two images that would cement her place as Canada’s representative.
Robyn’s signature style involves photographing subjects and backgrounds separately, then meticulously layering multiple images to create the final composite artwork. One of her nominated pieces, a captivating self-portrait, features Robyn draped in a hand-sewn cape. The attention to detail is evident in the lifelike capture of the fabric’s flow, showcasing the artist’s commitment to her craft.
As the World Photography Cup inches closer, Robyn and her partner, Curtis Jones, find themselves in an unprecedented situation. Marking a first in the competition’s history, they are the first couple representing the same country in the same year, albeit in different categories. The World Photography Cup has received submissions from 42 countries, with the top 10 finalists set to be revealed at the end of January. The winners will then be announced in a grand ceremony in Texas come spring.
While the world awaits the results of the World Photography Cup, Robyn is not resting on her laurels. She is already gearing up for her next venture — the launch of her first art book slated for release in the upcoming summer. This achievement serves as testament to her relentless pursuit of artistic expression and her unwavering dedication to her craft.
CAMERON, Ariz. – Near the southern end of the Grand Canyon is a trading post where you can find the work of Native American artisans, and if you’re lucky, you might catch the artist working there, too.
Vivian Descheny is one of those artisans, and amidst the tourists and traders you can hear a sound that’s been heard for generations – rug weaving.
Vivian Descheny has been a rug weaver for 34 years, a tradition she hopes to pass along to her children and grandchildren. (Erin Cox, KSL TV)
“My grandkids really love the thump of this pattern,” Descheny said as she worked on a rug that would take her a week or so to complete.
Descheny grew up listening to the sound of rug weaving, something her grandmother passed on to her when she was 14 years old.
“She told me you don’t need a university degree, all you need is your hands, your weaving, your thoughts and your prayer,” Descheny said.
Born in Salt Lake City, Descheny later moved to Arizona and is the only remaining Navajo rug weaver at the Cameron Trading Post.
“They’re all deceased, and they didn’t really teach their children or grandchildren,” Descheny said.
Using 40 separate colors, Descheny weaves five patterns into one rug. Her pattern, known as the Burntwater weave, is one of a kind.
“All my rugs, they have a part of me,” Descheny said.
Known as the “Spiderwoman,” Descheny worries that the rug weaving tradition will not continue on with the next generations.
“These days, children are not really interested in learning the culture of weaving,” she said.
A sentiment shared by Jimmy Jensen, a Navajo silversmith at the trading post.
When he was 8 years old, Jensen discovered he could make jewelry.
“Anything that I can draw on a piece of paper without picking it up, I can make,” Jensen said. ”It’s just my hand and my trusty pliers.”
Jensen makes silver deer charms that tell the story of a 4,000-year-old talisman found in a cave near the Grand Canyon, it was originally created to help bring good luck and help his ancestors find food.
The tradition of making a silver deer was passed down by his grandfather and is one he hopes to continue.
Jimmy Jensen makes handmade jewelry, anywhere from silver hummingbirds, dragonflies, and friendship hands, to deer. (Erin Cox, KSL TV)
“That’s why I share with my kids,” Jensen said. “My kids all make the same type of jewelry.”
It’s not just about creating a livelihood from their craft or even displaying their art, but for Jensen and Descheny, it’s about preserving these traditions.
“This is what we do,” Descheny said. “You got to pass it down. Our little family has to continue.”
SUBMITTED PHOTOS – WHITE PINE MANOR PHOTO FARM – Images of the Photography Studio’s sets that can be rented for family photos. More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
By IVY JACOBS
Times Co-Editor
Did you know that one of the premier photography studios is in Clay County?
SUBMITTED PHOTOS – WHITE PINE MANOR PHOTO FARM – Images of the Photography Studio’s sets that can be rented for family photos. More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
White Pine Manor is a unique photo studio.
“The dream in purchasing this land was to bring back community and family memory making,” said JoAnn Wilkerson, who bought the land a few years ago for the sole purpose. I wanted to provide a place for families to make memories together. I knew this would be a perfect place.”
The 16-acre is a place to slow down and enjoy the scenic beauty of the outdoors while taking the perfect photos. Some special places include a unique glass house and numerous indoor backdrop sets featuring seasonal vintage art to create the most memorable images available for professional and novice photographers at reasonable prices.
SUBMITTED PHOTOS – WHITE PINE MANOR PHOTO FARM – Images of the Photography Studio’s sets that can be rented for family photos. More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
Friends Debbie McNinch is an award-winning photographer with decades of experience, and Wilkerson works together to create the award-winning seasonal sets in “Studio 624.”
“We do these together. I get to be creative and artistic,” said McNinch, who loves helping people bring art back to photography. “JoAnn is the detail person. She gets things done.”
“It is amazing how our minds work together to get things done,” said Wilkerson, who urged McNinch to tell a story about why each set is special.
SUBMITTED PHOTOS – WHITE PINE MANOR PHOTO FARM – Images of the Photography Studio’s sets that can be rented for family photos. More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
“We were poor when I was a child, but somehow, my mom saved the money to buy my first camera. She encouraged my love of photography,” said McNinch. “To honor her, I put something of my mother’s in each set.”
“Our brains just mesh so well,” said Wilkerson, explaining there are not many photo barns throughout the county.
Both women share a love of “vintage junk,” which works well when designing photography sets.
SUBMITTED PHOTOS – WHITE PINE MANOR PHOTO FARM – Images of the Photography Studio’s sets that can be rented for family photos. More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
Last year, White Pine Manor was nationally recognized with a “Most Innovation” award for their photo barn.
“Each one is unique; they do their own things,” said McNinch about the outside-the-box idea. “We are kind of known.”
More than 200 photographers from throughout Indiana and a handful from outside the state have used the facilities at White Pine Manor Photo Barn for photo shoots. Many families have scheduled appointments for family photos and engagement and wedding photos throughout the year.
The mission statement of White Pine Manor is “Capture The Memory.”
the winter sets are available until the end of December, with new ones coming in January.
McNinch said it takes about two weeks to tear down and put new ideas together.
“The new sets should be available mid-January,” said Wilkerson. “People can check Facebook (White Pines Manor photo farm) for details.”
More information is available at www.whitepinemanor.com.
