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About and Contact

A cartoon illustration of a cheerful boy in a green and white striped shirt and yellow trousers, joyfully holding up an old Kodak Box Brownie camera to his eye, against a bright blue sky background. Beneath the illustration, the caption reads 'What's a Box Brownie?'

Hi, I'm John Corney — the artist and photographer behind KornKob Art.

My obsession with capturing the world didn't start with a high-end digital sensor. It started when I was nine years old, growing up in New Zealand. My dad lent me his "Box Brownie" — a Kodak Six-20 Brownie C, to be exact — for a school trip, and let's just say he never really got it back.

That simple box camera taught me the fundamentals of framing a moment. It taught me that you don't need complex gear to tell a story; you just need an eye for the light.

Old School Roots, New School Tools

What the Box Brownie did for photography in the 1950s, digital cameras have taken to the nth degree in the 21st century. Computing power, image software, and the internet have enabled all of us newly-minted hobbyists to publish our art cheaply and widely for anyone to see.

While my roots are in film, I'm not afraid of the future. I've embraced the digital revolution — from the first DSLRs to the latest in AI-assisted digital art. I believe art is about imagination, not just documentation. Sometimes that means taking a "purist" nature photograph, and other times it means using digital tools to add a painterly twist or an ironic turn to a concept. My work is a blend of both: the discipline of that old Box Brownie mixed with the limitless color and texture of modern digital art.

On AI-Generated Imagery

We're now entering a new world of imagery with the advent of AI image generators, and I have to admit I've been onboard from early on. The progress has been remarkable, and a wide array of AI tools are now available to anyone with imagination. I'm enthusiastically letting my imagination run wild — learning to work with AI to create new imagery, or to reinterpret pieces from my photography archive in styles I couldn't have achieved any other way.

My approach is straightforward: I treat AI the way a film director treats a cinematographer. I know what I want the finished piece to feel like, and AI helps me get there. Every piece is disclosed openly on my blog and in my shop listings as either photography, digital art, or AI-assisted, so buyers always know what they're looking at. I hope you enjoy the mix, whether the piece in front of you is "old-school" photography or something the eight-year-old with the Box Brownie could never have imagined.

The Shop

I'm honest that I'm not in this to make a living. Making images is how I get my dopamine hits. Most of my sales earn me less than fifty cents in commission. But when someone buys one of my pieces at Redbubble, I get the dopamine hit of knowing I managed to please someone with my art. I think of it as a "like," plus a coin in the busker's cup.

My portfolio of photography and digital art is available on Redbubble as high-quality print-on-demand prints, apparel, greeting cards, phone cases, home decor, and more.

Visit the KornKob Art Shop

You can also find my work by searching Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Get in Touch

Questions, commissions, collaborations, or just a note about a piece you liked — please use the form below. I read everything that comes through.

Thanks for joining me on this visual journey.

— John

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

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The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape — © John Corney The Watchman is one of Zion National Park's most recognizable formations — the peak that rises up just past the south entrance, often photographed reflected in or framed by the Virgin River as it winds through the valley floor. I photographed this view on the same January 2006 trip as the other winter Zion piece in this collection, with the river running low and the cottonwoods and willows along the bank stripped bare for the season. I worked this one up with AI assistance into a full painterly interpretation, the same way I've approached the rest of this Zion series — directing the process the way a film director works with a cinematographer, choosing what to carry forward from the original photograph and what to push harder. Here that meant leaning into the warmth of the low winter light against the cool snow on the upper ridgeline, and letting th...
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