The Bellwether Curtains

I shot this strange photo on my iPhone 6plus while on a weekend getaway in Bellingham, WA in January.

My partner and I had booked a room at the Hotel Bellwether, looking to de-stress for a few days, and to explore a new city. We got the key to our room, and when I walked in, the first thing that immediately caught my eye were the floral curtains across the room. That's a lie. The first thing that caught my eye was the complimentary chocolate on the bed, and then the curtains. They caught my eye because of the pattern on them; the kind of pattern that you aren't sure if you hate because it looks like your grandmother puked all over it, or if you love it because it's so ugly. I decided that yes, the curtains were ugly, and I loved them. The peachy/pink tones in the fabric matched the retro orange color of the armchair in the corner of the room. Seeing the two pieces together got my creative wheels turning, and I wished I had brought my digital camera to take pictures with.

I took photos of the city on my iPhone that weren't very exciting, and each night we came back to our room after drinking coffee and wandering old bookstores, I would look at the curtains, in warm lamp light, with the chair in the corner, and imagine what kind of photos I could take if I had my good camera with me.

On our last night at the Bellwether, I was in the middle of packing up my bag for the early trip home the next morning, when I realized one of my wool sweaters I had brought was the exact same color as the chair, so I couldn't leave without at least trying to take some photos on my iPhone, even if they turned out bad. I didn't have a plan, but I knew I wanted to take some portraits in my matching sweater.

I didn't bring a tripod with me, so finding a place to prop my phone up on, that was also close enough to the chair and curtains was a bit challenging. I eventually used the nightstand next to the bed, and stacked some books I had bought to put the phone on. It worked! I opened it up to the front camera and locked the focus so that I could look at the lighting without the phone automatically changing it. There was a standing lamp by the chair that was casting warm, yellow lighting around the area, but I wanted it to be more red because I like moody lighting. I had a thin red shirt in my bag that I pulled out and wrapped around the lampshade. By looking at my phone screen as I did this, I could tell that completely covering the light made it too red and too dark, so I folded a corner of the shirt so that a portion of the light was peeking through, which cast a brighter light in the center of the frame, like a spotlight, while the darker, red light stayed around the outside.

After I was happy with the lighting, I set the 10 second self timer on my phone, and started shooting. It took a while to get a portrait that I actually liked because I had to keep getting up to push the timer button and sit down and pose all in 10 seconds. Eventually, I got one that was good enough(photo 1). I liked that the colors match, and I liked the shadow on my face, but the portrait was a little boring and overdone for me. I wanted to shoot something strange, and maybe creepy. I started playing around with different ways I could position myself, and unusual ways I could sit in the chair. I would look at the frame in my camera for each position to see if it was something I liked and looked good. I thought it might be interesting to take the cushion off, slump down in the chair, and put the cushion back on top of me(photo 3). I like that it looks like I am part of the chair, or that I'm coming out of it. Either way, I liked the idea of just showing limbs instead of my face or my entire body. Then, I had an idea; I could take a bunch of photos of my hands and arms, and overlay them onto top of each other so that they all ended up in one photo. I had taken similar photos before, but of my head, so I had a good idea of what I needed to shoot. First, I took a photo of just the chair and the curtain(photo 2), and then without changing any lighting or repositioning my phone, I took the next photo(photo 4), to overlay later. Then, I did the same thing with the arm/hand shots(photos 5, 6, 7).

I waited to edit the photos until I got back home because I knew it would take some time. I uploaded photos 2 and 4 into the photo editing app PicsArt, and overlaid the 4th photo on top of the 2nd photo, matching up the chair in both photos, and then erasing the messy part of my hair in photo 4. Then, one after the other, I overlaid photos 3, 5, 6,7 and 8, matched up the chair and curtains, and erased unwanted details to get photo 9 (more below photo 9).

Below are photos of how I overlaid each photo one by one in PicsArt to create the edit with the hands.

For the final edit, I imported my photo into my favorite photo editing app, VSCO, to make it more moody.

I started by putting the filter BBMA over it, and then made adjustments. I brought the exposure down to -1.o and kept the contrast the same. I upped the sharpness to +2.5 because the photo lost some resolution after so many edits. Then I put saturation at -0.2, the highlights at +2.5, and the raised the shadows to +6.9. For white balance, I adjusted the temperature to +0.2, and the tint all the way at the lowest, -5.5, which is what gave the photo the sickly green color. I bumped the skin tone option all the way up to +6.0 to bring out the orange colors, and put a vignette over it at +11.4.

After all of the filter adjustments, I decided to rotate the photo slightly because I liked how it looked crooked, and the photo below is the finished outcome.

I was really excited that after all of that work I came out with a photo that isn't perfect, but one that I actually like and am proud of, AND I shot and edited everything on my iPhone. I am not going to underestimate my powers as a creator, or my iPhone camera anymore.