iPhoneographer of the Day Ronald Gafar | @naldt There are many talents out there that I have yet to discovered. Ronald Gafar is one of those who appeared to me by chance. He submitted some work for last months (November) feature which caught my eye. I have done a run through of his work and really enjoyed what he has been capturing over the past month or so. Without further ado, the iPhoneography story of Ronald Gafar‌
EC: Where are you from? Tell me about yourself? RG: I’m from Indonesia, currently I work for a global PR agency in the Digital Division. I’ve been living in this small city outside Jakarta and have never moved anywhere. I love nature, especially the beach, I guess it’s the only place I could be where I can take my mind off things, the views of the sea horizon are stunning. I love music and I play guitar in a hardcore band.
EC: How did you get into iPhoneography? RG: My colleague showed me his iPhone photo work about a year ago or so and I was like ‘Wow, you can do this with the iPhone?” I’ve been toying around with various Lomo Cams for a while and I was just struck with the results and thought that I can do the lomo look-a-like with this phone, at that time I didn’t have enough money to get an iPhone so I encouraged my sister to buy one rather than any other smartphones, I was in Singapore back then, bought the 3GS and took so many pictures there. A month later I bought myself a 3GS. Most of my shots were taken with 3GS but now I’m using iPhone 4 since a month ago or so. (Twin Hanged)
EC: What does iPhoneography mean to you? RG: It means happiness, a personal therapy for me other than music. I am a visual and audio kinda person. I think I have a keen sense on both :D
EC: Do you have any formal training regarding traditional photography? RG: I’ve never really learned about traditional photography but I did some online reading just some basic stuff about it. I’d rather experiment with it and see the results, keep doing it over and over with different setting or apps and see how things come up with it. Sometimes you don’t get the result that you wanted, but surprisingly it becomes a good shot. (Street Pigeon)
EC: What has been the some of the challenges of using the iPhone as a camera?
(Mobile Toilet)
EC: Who or what are your artistic influences? RG: Sion Fullana and Chase Jarvis. Those guys inspires me a lot. I’m most drawn to street photography and travel photography.
RG: How to make an ordinary object become visually extraordinary, things that you see everyday, like a glass on a table and capture it in such a way so it’ll look like more than just a glass on a table, it’s creatively challenging.
EC: How has social media such as Twitter helped or hindered the way you choose to share your work with others? RG: Social media has helped me with everything in share my work. It’s the easiest way to share my work and to reach people and get in touch with iPhoneography community around the world. Most of my work is uploaded to Posterous, also some in Tumblr and Flickr, but I didn’t upload much on both, and Facebook too. I received a good response from other iPhoneographers and friends, I’m happy to have new friends from far away who are doing the same thing, I mean there are a lot of people who have an iPhone but not really much of them are using it as a camera and became passionate about it or as a hobby.
(PhotoContest)
EC: Has your work been published before, if so, where? Did you ever expect your work to be noticed by the iPhoneography community? RG: There was a iPhoneography photo competition here in town and some tech journalist were there to cover it. They gave 30 minutes to take shots and there were 2 girls posing around holding an iPhone, it was a boring pose so I asked the girl to put the phone on the table and use her hand to cover her mouth, hahaha, I was the 2nd winner. There weren’t many participants and I was in my early phase of taking photos with an iPhone. I think it’s a personal satisfaction when people like and get noticed in whatever they do.
EC: What has been the most surprising or most predictable reaction from people to your iPhotographs? RG: Haha, the most obvious is, ‘How did you do that?” or “you can do this with an iPhone?” and most of them were really surprised after I showed all of my work is done with an iPhone.
EC: What’s in your iPhone camera bag? What app(s) do you currently use the most often? RG: I most often use BestCamera, Vint B&W, PictureShow, AutoStitch, Camera Bag, TitlShiftGen, and Hipstamatic. (Angelica)
EC: Do you mind telling us how you have created a recent piece of iPhonographic work from start to finish? RG: I’d love to :) STEP 1 This is the original, unedited JPEG straight off the camera. The unedited photo is ordinary but with this angle, I want can add “feel” to make it more interesting
STEP 4 I love white frames, I always use BestCamera for white frames. So I open it and straight went to it and saved it.
STEP 2 Next, I open the photo in the TiltShiftGen app. This app has an incredible of editing tools to create miniature fake photos. I wanted to create a dreamy effect so first I adjusted the blurryness, I chose the circular blur, put it on the face or center of the photo and slide it to max.
RESULT: Here it is
STEP 3 Next, I opened LoMob app, I wanted to make it a soft black & white old kinda look, I found the Tri Black Film feature is very suitable without making it “too old broken look”, you got the dreamy old B&W photo instead.
Thank you Ronald for participating in this feature here on iPhoneogenic, the iPhoneogenic Facebook Page, and on Twitter @iPhone0genic. I’m pleased and very honored to have you on my blog.
For more on Ronald check out these links: Posterous: www.erge.posterous.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/naldt
All images shown here are copyrighted property of the artist, please contact Ronald Gafar for copyright privileges.