Neuro Divergent Person’s Foto Play and Word Smithing

Can you tell us about your passion and how do you work on it?

Two of my Aspie passions – or ‘special interests’ – are colour harmonising and word play;  I get to ‘act’ these out through phone camera photo journaling and exploring my neuodivergent voice in creative writing.

Currently I put these two activities together through the posts that I upload to the global online gallery that is Instagram.  In the past I have, similarly, posted on my own ‘Person is Not a Rude Word’ blog (exploration of life as neuro divergent transgenderqueer) – as a part of my ‘Off the Trolley Productions’ creativity in the real and virtual world(s).

With the upgrade to a mobile phone with a camera, I discovered the fun of ‘manifesting’ what I term (and tag) #fotomosaic_grids. 

What is a fotomosaic grid? Have you previously written about this process?

Basically a screen shot of an array of random and/or sequential photos that capture my day-to-day activities: in the home or out and about.  (Different styles and shapes of image mosaic / grids can be achieved with various photo apps, but I particularly relish the randomness that comes with only using my phone’s default photo-filing system.)

With my in-three-installments (each nearly a year apart) blog posts entitled ‘Photo’d HisHerstory : Potted History’ I explain and explore the process of my #fonefotolove, and what is has meant to my life as a person diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Condition via the Brighton (Sussex, England) Neurobehavioural Clinic at age 55.

Excerpt from Pt 1:

It wasn’t until 2010 that I acquired a Nokia camera phone.  Then began my photo-journalling journey.  That date was still 4 years prior to my diagnosis with Asperger’s Syndrome – when my newly-obsessive snap-happy life was made clearer: taking photographs was a way to encapsulate the intensity of my visual sensory input experience; plus, being busy taking photographs gave me a way to be self-contained within stress-inducing social situations.

What does this process mean to you?

Not only did phone photo capture give me an activity that gave me a sense of being active and engaged – whilst out and about alone – I also got to enjoy the semi-abstract art of the combined images: where lines from each formed linking patterns; colours harmonised across the square or rectangular grid formations; the software-default-cropping of images rendered them new and different from the original single shot.  I could play with mosaics within mosaics, self-crop or duplicate images, or just enjoy the different grid formations that changed with each necessary phone, or Android operating system, upgrade.

Now, 10 years later, it is small wonder that I have amassed more than 60,000 photos in iPhoto from ‘my’ past decade! 

And with each upload of categorised photo files, I could satisfy my Aspie organisational skills by amassing these into further multiple categories of albums: each providing a great alternative-to-TV slideshow, after a meal with a favoured beverage and a puff of my Vape stick!

When did you start taking your phone art online?

Adding photography to my ‘Person is not a Rude Word’ blog was always a part of each posting from its inception in 2013. In an offshoot OTTProduction, a 30-day-blog entitled ‘HaikuCity’ – for April’s NaPoWriMo 2014 – each 5-7-5 syllables poem posting had an accompanying phone photo-of-the-day.

I began posting my #fotomosaic_grids art on Instagram in May 2018; originally as just 9-shots-squares captured on a Samsung Galaxy A3.  Adding to my @s.walk.r page also presented the pleasurable challenge of creating experience-defining tags, such #in_the_colour_time_zone  (or, in the last year, #in_the_corona_time_zone) and #in_the_pattern_line_zone.  Plus I always add a final descriptor of my neurodivergent’s journey with each posting: ‘#aspie out&about for #artsake…’ or  ‘aspie does escoot ‘n’ shoot…’

An excerpt from the Person is Not a Rude Word blog post, Pt 2 reads:

Tagged #neuroDV_fotoart on my Instagram page, I recognise and embrace my Aspie attention to the visual detail of my days – now encapsulated/digitalised into 15, 18 and 21-photo-image screenshots with my upgrade to a Samsung smartphone in 2014.

How has this process helped you?

Whether I’m snap-capturing a display of vegetables, a piece of my 2D or 3D artwork in construction, a series of macro and landscape images from a coach trip out with Assert (Brighton’s ASC support organisation), or a few-days-away holiday, phone photography gives instant pleasure, mindful focus, gratitude for seeing beauty in all the details – whether of the sublime or the grime.

As I wrote of my 60th birthday-celebrating solo holiday, on the Isles of Scilly, in my blog post Pt 3:

Aspie heaven: alone and quiet and visually/manually ‘stimming’ with the phone ‘shutter button’ = 500+ fotos for 55+ mosaic_grids of ‘Beauty Fest’ !

You can see more of my #fotomosaic_grids, including as slideshows, via this WordPress link:

https://offthetrolleyproductions.blog/2018/06/17/photod-hishersto…tted-history-pt1

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