The 2013 1197 Conference concluded last week at New York’s Soho Gallery For Digital Art, in combination with the opening of the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards Exhibition there. I was a participant in the the Create, Career & Community panel and not only got to see the exhibition, but catch a little bit of the other panels as well.
If you weren’t able to attend, I’ve got my wrap up post here and Daniel Berman of the MPAs has put together a short video with highlights from this year’s 1197 and MPA Exhibition Opening. >>>
Mobile Photo Awards’ Daniel Berman has put together an excellent short video montage of the people and events of this year’s 1197 conference.
This year’s 1197 Conference was organized by SGDA’s dynamic Susannah Perlman who put together a great pool of talent from many aspects of the mobile photography community. The two and half day conference featured panels on mobile apps, shooting a variety of subjects including street, fashion and food, and a couple of panels on monetizing mobile photography.
This year’s 1197 also included the opening of the MPA’s Award Exhibition. The Soho Gallery For Digital Art did a great job of presenting the images. These native digital works were presented on many large video displays. The large size of the displays allowed the images to be viewed “gallery size” adding to the visual and emotional impact of the works. Images rotated and changed every few minutes throughout the exhibition. Ambient light was well balanced allowing the colors and details of the photography to stand out.
Conference panelists included mobile photographers — iPhone and other platforms, app and accessory developers, as well as other suppliers to the photography community at large. What was impressive about this lineup is how seriously so many outside of the iPhoneography community are taking the art of mobile photography.
Panelists included iPhoneographers/photographers Daniel Berman, Sion Fullana, John De Guzman, Jordan Cortese, Malachi Sherlock, Tim Young; bloggers Jen Pollack Bianco, Kirsten Alana, Life In LoFi’s Marty Yawnick (I know him!); online community pioneers Nate Park from iPhoneArt.com and Flo Meissner from EyeEm; app developers John Balestrieri from Tinrocket, Ari Fuchs from Aviary and many others.
One of the artists in attendance was Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson, who attended much of the conference and wrote an excellent recap piece on her blog here.
While not Macworld size in scale and scope, the conferences that I saw helped to illuminate the current state of several areas of iPhoneography, mobile photography, the importance of social media, and monetizing the whole thing.
It’s an interesting transitional time in iPhoneography, where the art has moved from hobbyists taking pictures with their phones to a lot of people who were previously on the outside taking this very seriously. Of course, anything with as many active numbers (and eyeballs) as iPhoneography is going to attract the attention of those who want a return on investment, whether it’s artists, developers or suppliers. I think that’s great and the financial interests underscore the growth potential of the artform and all it effects (which is pretty far reaching).
Unfortunately, on our panel, there were no quick and easy answers — no magic money machine at this time. Even writing a blog can be difficult to monetize. Based on all revenue sources here, I earn about a buck or two an hour for the work I put into Life In LoFi.
It was a very interesting hour. I’ll be posting audio of the complete panel soon. Until then, Jennifer’s recap sums it up well.
Call me old school, but one of the things that I liked the most about 1197 and MPAs this year was the large number of iPhoneographers who traveled to New York specifically for this conference. It was a pleasure for me to meet many iPhoneographers who I’d only previously known online through their images and Facebook posts. For me, the best part of 1197 was meeting and engaging online friends. It truly adds another, important dimension to the connection to actually converse real time, often about topics other than photography. What you’ll see in the video above is a huge and impressive collective of artists.
Like I said in my part of the presentation. This is an amazing, open, giving community we’re all part of.
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