"pulvus et umbra sumus"...& summer in the Dordogne

In this week's "1000 Words" showcase by the good folks over at WeAreJuxt,

 I'm honored to have this shot included:

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And, looking back at summer,

this photo made the list for Life in LoFi's favorite photos of the summer,

a field of sunflowers in the Dordogne:

(TangledFX app used for the slight 'Van Gogh' effect here)

Five shots, five colors--the #CTC13 contest...

For tonight, some discipline in being photographically concise--choosing just five scenes from this summer's travels...I was going through the France-and-Spain-photos on my iPhone, and then I read about the "Capture the Color" travel-photo-blogging contest...and I thought this would be a good exercise in visual-summarizing: five photos, five colors...
...and to limit myself, ONLY photos from my iPhone.

(This posting, incidentally, 

is a copy of my 'official entry' 

for the allophile.com blog, 

not this 'snapseeded' one...)

For complete information on this contest, go here:
http://www.travelsupermarket.com/c/holidays/capture-the-colour/

...and as part of the process, each blogger nominates five fellow bloggers to participate; so here goes:

Joshua Berman--http://blog.joshuaberman.net/

Robert Koehler--http://www.rjkoehler.com/

Andi Fisher--http://misadventureswithandi.com/

Amber West--http://withoutsushi.com/

Lori Parker--http://girlparker.com/

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RED

When flying over the Grand Canyon, ALWAYS get a window seat...
a summer storm off in the distance, from my Tucson-Salt Lake City flight back in June,
the first leg of my flight to Paris

WHITE

The Château de Chenonceau,
spanning the River Cher

BLUE

For one glorious evening and morning,
this was 'our Paris'--the view from our hotel room
in Montmartre

YELLOW

it's a cliché, but...when driving by a field of sunflowers
in the South of France, you just have to stop and get a roadside picture;
a 'painterly' view of Castelnau-sur-Gupie, between the Garonne and Dordogne rivers

GREEN

The World comes to Paris...
on the Quai Anatole France, on the Left Bank of the Seine,
a walkable world-map

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Not part of  'the five,'

but this one soap-shop window-front scene 

from Barcelona could sum it all up:

...back from Europe...anyone going to be in Vermont?

I've been back in Arizona for about a week-and-a-half now...And back to work, as the school-year here began this past week...I took about a thousand photos with my iPhone while in France and Spain from late June through last week; stay tuned...

But for this first post-trip post, a question for you readers--will anyone be in Vermont now through September first? The Vermont Center for Photography is hosting a juried exhibition, and I'm honored to have two images included!

So, should you find yourself in the area, check it out, and you'll see these images of mine:

"Nighthawks for Dumplings, Bukchon, Seoul"

"When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."

(scenes from France and Spain...coming soon...)

"Bici en el Barrio Viejo" in this week's "Apps Uncovered"

This past spring, I went on a photo-walk in Tucson's Barrio Viejo...
...and one of the scenes from that day is featured in this week's "Apps Uncovered" by iphoneographycentral.com:

"Bici en el Barrio Viejo, Tucson"

Backstory/Apps Used: Just south of downtown Tucson, the architectural soul of the city--

Sonoran adobe rowhouses from the 19th-c., unique in the U.S. 

(iPhone5, snapseed, iwatermark)

It's an honor to have this photo in this week's showcase; there is some amazing work in this week's selections!

The "Apps Uncovered" series is such a good place to learn from--the 'backstory' for each image gives you a bit of a behind-the-scenes look into the 'toolbox' the photographer/artist used.

For this particular image, as you can see, the only app I used was snapseed. (iWatermark is just used for my 'signature' in the corner.) I used the crop-tool to make the scene into a square, and then the 'drama' filter allowed me to bring out the texture of the wall. I used the 'center focus' tool just very lightly for a slight vignette. 

New apps keep coming out every week, but snapseed remains my 'go-to' app--even when I use others for different effects, I usually begin and end the process with snapseed.

From the chicken to the dinosaur

I've been having fun playing with semi-surrealism with recent iPhone images; last week's "ominous chicken talk" shot was featured in Mobiography's weekly showcase...and then today, WeAreJuxt's weekly "1000 Words" showcase came out...including this:

"When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there..."

On a busy, otherwise prosaic, intersection near where I live in Tucson, a dinosaur sculpture presides over the traffic whizzing by fast food, a gas station, and an oil-change joint…The words of Guatemalan author Augusto Monterrosso come to mind when I pass this seemingly gratuitous T-Rex reproduction–in one of the shortest short-stories in any language, he wrote: “Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.” (“When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.”) That’s it, just that one sentence; enigmatic, allegorical, and surreal…Juxtaposition within one short sentence that illuminates the juxtaposition of a prehistoric-reptilian-statue in the middle of the automobile-centered cityscape of the American West…

I took this with my iPhone5. Initially I used the Perspective Correct app to straighten the traffic light next to the sculpture. Then I used Snapseed to crop and even out the exposure. The grid/fold overlay is from ScratchCam–but to get the ‘folds’ to line up where I wanted them to, I placed the photo in one of the options in the PicFrame app, estimating where it would line up in ScratchCam before I would crop it again. The surreal color-gradation from ‘prehistoric’ red on the right to dream-like green sky on the left is also from ScratchCam. To add a bit more texture, I used DistressedFX, and then the final vignetting was done in snapseed. (For my ‘signature’ in the bottom corner, I used iWatermark.)

Honored to be included again!

(Another 'surrealization' of a Tucson landmark 

was featured back in March.)

A week off: spring landscapes, downtown, and close to home

The school district I work for gave us a long spring-break this year: the week before AND the Monday after Easte--off! Always good for mental health...

So, here's some of what caught my eye over the past week-and-a-day...

My wife and I went for a hike in Catalina State Park, just north of Tucson--the winter rains came at the right time for spring wildflowers in the desert:

While not as spectacular as the spring of 2010, it's always worthwhile 

to go for a hike in the desert when the wildflowers are out...

lupine, Mexican gold poppies, owl clover

(AND, incidentally, the photo above was featured 

on the local TV news last Tuesday.)

...so ephemeral...

Spring runoff, flowing water in the desert, saguaro reflections...

While running the loop in Saguaro National Park, on the city's eastern edge,

I noticed this saguaro-skeleton

with its signature downturned arms:

Just a few years ago, it looked like this:

 Memento mori, from a cactus...

A couple of downtown evenings:

Late-night coffee-and-dessert at the Cup Café in the 1919 Hotel Congress:

No longer a motel,

but this vintage neon sign has survived:

And one of the best restaurants in Tucson,

Downtown Kitchen & Cocktails:

Some street-art--on the corner of 4th and University, just north of downtown, just east of the Univ. of AZ:

Seeing this, this phrase came to mind: "Read me a good story, and I'll never forget..."

love how the b&w ants seem to pop off the brick...

and a bit of the ColorSplash app here, to make the 'bouquets' stand out.

Pistols. Flowers. Ant.

Hmm...

Today--a trail-run into Bear Canyon...

...four miles in, four miles out: crisscrossing a seasonal stream,

a few boulders and a couple of switchbacks,

trail lined with wildflowers this time of year...

 ...with Seven Falls as the destination:

(I love these guys--not that common,

Coulter's hibiscus, a.k.a. desert rosemallow)

On the way to Bear Canyon, 

a stand of cottonwoods I keep returning to:

 Closer to home, something abstract:

Well, actually, inside home, these permutations;

here's the original image:

(looking up in the entryway)

And who can resist a bird's nest?

 --on the back patio--the mother dove left for a few minutes, so I thought I would check on the two babies (dovelets? dovelings? chicks?) The mother dove did come back...all is well...

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...and a fun surprise from last night--

I found out that this photo, "nighthawks for noodles,"

was featured in this week's "Through the lens of an iphone" showcase

by iphoneography.com

 

Taken on my last night in Seoul, a couple of summers ago...

An honor to be included...

A few hours in Palm Springs--mountaintop and Marilyn...

Last weekend found us in southern California for a quick trip...

...on the way back to Tucson, we decided to get off I-10 and spend a few hours in Palm Springs.

The giant windmills beneath San Gorgonio Mountain are surreal...

...then heading up into Chino Canyon...

...to take the Swiss-built rotating aerial-tram up to the snowy and forested Mt. San Jacinto wilderness...

From the lodge at the top, a view over the Desert Cities over and across the San Andreas Fault to the low mountains of Joshua Tree National Park...

The contrast between the barren desert floor and the wintry evergreens at the stop is striking; the magic of elevation-and-climate in the desert...

Back down in Palm Springs--

downtown at the corner of Palm Canyon Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way:

Twenty-six feet tall, seventeen tons of steel, aluminum and paint--"Forever Marilyn" by artist Seward Johnson, inspired by this famous photo from the film "The Seven Year Itch."

...and I couldn't resist this shot--the triangle of the toddler, reclining guy positioned just so, and the statue's (whimsical? voyeuristic?) backside: the toddler (whose face I've respectfully blurred) seemed to be staring at the guy lying on the lawn, accusing him: "really, dude? You're napping right there, staring at the statue? Kinda creepy..."

Incidentally, the new issue of The Atlantic has an insightful essay on Marilyn Monroe's celebrity-hood... 

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...and back home in Tucson--
looking over Bear Canyon, on a trail run the other evening: 

 
After last week's snow--back up to 80-degrees now in Southern Arizona...

2013, day one: deer and snowcapped mountains

The first of the year dawned bright and cold here in southern Arizona. With yesterday's clouds lifting overnight, we woke up to freshly snowcapped Santa Catalina Mountains on the horizon; a perfect winter morning in the desert...a perfect day for my wife and I to take a hike. 

We weren't on the trail for five minutes yet, when:

...and then the deer practically pranced across our trail: 

...stopped to pick a fruit from a barrel cactus: 

 ...a bit of chewing:

...and finally, off to graze elsewhere:

A perfect winter day:

snowcapped Thimble Peak

above the cottonwoods in Sabino Canyon,

still hanging on to the last of last autumn's color:

Hiking boots, a bottle of water, some sunscreen...and the iPhone--all you need...