Looking through the gate...magazine pages...and moving on...

Yeah, it's been a few months since I last posted.

I'll explain more in a bit...

But first, some recent news.

Just a few weeks ago, I found out that this photo

was one of this year's honorable mentions 

in the Mobile Photography Awards

Travel category:

"Changing of the Guard,

through Gwanghwamun Gate"

(taken in Seoul, June 2011, iPhone4,

edited with snapseed and BigLens)

That trip to Korea several summers ago was when I first had my eyes opened to mobile photography...and then about 7 months later, after I got the snapseed app, I began this blog...

And, in

TZIPAC's upcoming special issue of 

43mm magazine,

(an exposé on mobile photography)

I'm honored to be published

on pages 124-127:

Peruse this issue's pages...

It truly is an honor to share page-space with some of today's great mobile-photography artists...

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So, yes, it's been a few months since I last posted.

I'd been re-thinking if/how to proceed with this blog--which began with my initial interest in mobile photography. I can hardly believe it's already been two years since I began it...I averaged 3 posts per month the first year, but last year, I only posted a couple of dozen times...

One of my posts, back in 2012, even caught the eye of the snapseed team and was featured in their newsletter: http://snapseeded.blogspot.com/2012/03/step-by-step-from-sidewalk-in-insadong.html 

It was a step-by-step 'how-to' showing the potential of snapseed, which back then, hadn't become as well-known...

But since then, while I still use snapseed as my 'go-to' editing app--my 'intial digital darkroom' for my iPhone-photos--I've incorporated other apps into my 'toolbox,' and it no longer seems reasonable to continue a blog about iphoneography which features only one app in its title. 

And so, after two years, this is the last post for snapseeded...

I'll continue posting iphoneography--and even that term, I wonder how much longer it will 'live'--on my other blog, allophile.com. 

It's been such an interesting time to be involved with photography and image-making, as phone-cameras have exploded...Art, journalism, travel-photography--all are being affected by what many are calling a 'new democratization' of photography due to mobile photo technology...I'm looking forward to seeing how it all will continue to evolve...

=====================

I think back to what I wrote in the first post of this blog...

I'll re-post it here:

--------------------

With snapseed so ideal for travel-photos, for capturing and playing with a sense of place,

this description of travel, by writer Rebecca Solnit, comes to mind:

"Perhaps people travel for pleasure because the visual is much more memorable than the tangible, the seen than the felt.  At the time, traveling may be nothing more than a series of discomforts in magnificent settings:  running for the train to paradise in a heat wave, carrying an ever heavier pack in alpine splendor, seeing sublime ruins with stomach trouble. Yet it is the field of images and not the body of sensations that lingers.  My mother once remarked that if women remembered what childbirth felt like, no one would have more than one child.  And so I, third child of a third child, owe my existence to forgetting and my taste for travels to the dominance of the eye..."

(--from A Book of Migrations)

"The field of images...the dominance of the eye..."

     ...all to be played with in the palm of one's hand...      

---------------------------------------------------------

Let's see where it continues to go...

...in iPhoneography Central's "Apps Uncovered"

Last week, iphoneographycentral.com published the recent installment in their "Apps Uncovered" series...and I'm honored to have two of my 'snapseeded' photos included:

"Red Doors, Sokcho"

Backstory/Apps Used: --like stepping back in time, this seaside district of Sokcho, S.Korea; a relic of the Korean War--the houses of N.Korean refugees and their descendants in the "Abai village" neighborhood (snapseed & colorsplash apps used; this photo among the "Honorable Mentions" in this year's Mobile Photo Awards)

     For "Red doors, Sokcho"--I took this with an iPhone4 a couple of summers ago. Not far from the location of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, Sokcho, South Korea has a frontier-feel. (The setting is gorgeous--between mountains and the sea, but lax zoning laws have led to haphazard construction.) The neighborhood where I saw this streetscape is a relic of the Korean War--on a spit of land between a lagoon and the sea, refugees from what would become North Korea built makeshift dwellings, thinking these would be just for the short-term... When the DMZ was drawn in 1953, they found themselves stranded, and this neighborhood has now been home to a several generations of these N. Korean descendants. It feels like a different world from the wifi-and-caffeinated frenzy of Seoul. I used snapseed and the ColorSplash apps for this scene. ColorSplash allowed me to isolate the red doors and shirt stripes, converting the rest of the scene into greyscale. Then I used snapseed's 'tilt-shift' filter and the 'white balance' option found among the 'tune image' options. Combining the 'hyper'-sepia tone and the red accents reminded me of the traditional color scheme used in many older Korean scroll-paintings.

"Bear Canyon, evening"

Backstory/Apps Used: I took the photo with my iPhone5 a few months ago while on a trail-run in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains on the edge of Tucson, Arizona. Winter evening light is just gorgeous in the desert. I used snapseed to convert the shot into a black-and-white scene, then used ''white balance' in the 'tune image' to warm up the scene. I also used the 'drama' filter to play with the contrast. The 'tilt-shift' filter in snapseed and then the "BigLens" app allowed me to smoothen out the sky.

from mackerel in a faraway market to desert blooms...

Yesterday, I was honored to find out that this photo ("Mackerel in the Market") is featured in this week's showcase that The App Whisperer curates...

I took this photo a couple of summers ago while visiting the coastal city of Sokcho, just south of the DMZ on the east coast of South Korea. Reminded of this market scene a few days ago, I decided to re-snapseed it. I was a bit surprised that the main thing I wanted to do was to de-saturate the image--normally, you tend to want to add color intensity, but the color of the fresh mackerel and the plastic buckets was already so vivid, that I thought the picture would benefit from slightly less color--but then I did warm up the white balance a bit...Below is the original.

When I was in the market, I loved the fact that this husband-and-wife team had a baseball-game on in the background as they worked on the day's catch...

Nearby, part of the waterfront, with the mountains of Seoraksan National Park in the background:

I am just starting to experiment with the Scratchcam app. I am wary of 'over-apping,' (slapping a filter on a scene does not necessarily a 'good image' make), but I have come to like textures...So, after reading some blog posts and interviews with mobile photographers whose images I've been admiring, I added Scratchcam to my iPhone...

...And scenes from Sokcho, again, came to mind. Sokcho is scenically-situated, but it definitely ain't quaint; it's a working port with lax zoning laws. Although it's near some spectacular mountains, the town itself is not a particular draw for visitors from outside of Korea; I ended up there a couple of summers ago because an uncle of mine had moved there...And while the town's modern architecture is haphazard (and at times breathtakingly ugly), there are some historically interesting neighborhoods, the air is clean, and the seafood is amazing...

So. The bridge--I liked the idea of the segmented texture overlaid on a panorama.

...the original, three-shots-blended-by-AutoStitch:

The neighborhood around this bridge, directly north of where I was staying, was originally settled in the 1950's, during the Korean War: refugees from the North built small--what they thought would be temporary--homes. Then, when the war stopped and the DMZ was drawn, they ended up stranded here. People who had farmed the same lands for generations found themselves now on a spit of land between a lagoon and the sea...and their ad hoc construction became their new homes. In the decades since then, the neighborhood has filled in even more--a dense, utilitarian, poignant hodge-podge:

--snapseed, then Scratchcam, then snapseed again, for this edit.

And here's the original:

Compared to the now-internationally-known images of Seoul (via "Gangnam-style"), this part of Sokcho is like stepping back in time...

======================

Now, back to where home is now: the Sonoran Desert...

One of my favorite desert flowers around Tucson, "sacred datura:"

Solely snapseed for this edit.

I often take my iPhone with me on my long weekend morning runs, and there's a spot in Sabino Canyon where there's almost always a bunch of these blooming from April through December. Each flower lasts for just a day--opening at night, and within a few hours of the following sunrise, closing up, finished... 

Before the 'grunge'-filter texturizing:

Purple-tinged and almost lunar..

Here's one that's closed up after having bloomed,

with a new bud underneath:

post-bloom and pre-bloom; point, counterpoint...

(the original)

With PicFrame--different ways of seeing:
the original...b&w...

...and then for the bottom two variations, I went back to Scratchcam...

This image was chosen for this week's "Capturing the Moment" showcase by mobiography.net:

After initial cropping and editing for exposure with snapseed, I chose this particular Scratchcam texture for its geometrical qualities; I like the contrast of the overlay of 'folds' on the tendril-tipped hexagonal flower. Each rectangular 'segment' of the scene could almost stand on its own as a study of texture- or color-detail. The bottom right--with the previous day's spent bloom in the shadow of its fully open 'sibling' on this particular morning--seems, to me, to be a 'memento mori:' a foil to the largest and brightest rectangular section to its left, so full of light and life.

===============================

Something less somber--
effervescent spring: a bee in a palo verde tree:


(kind of going for a Japanese wood-block on Korean-paper effect here...)

This time of year, my wife and I do miss the cherry blossoms up in Seattle, 
but in their own way, the palo verde here almost make up for it...

And, turning things upside down,
a reflective moment in the canyon:

featured on AMPt's twitter challenge this week.


================================
One last image--
yesterday's #fmsPhotoADay challenge theme was "earth;"
I couldn't resist the word- and visual-play,
so I used the TinyPlanets app to
manipulate a scene from a few weeks ago
at the Mission San Xavier del Bac:
 "Mission on Earth."

A couple of "Honorable Mentions!"

For the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards "Travel" category,

two of my submissions made "Honorable Mention!"

One from Seoul:

Hyangweonjeon, or "The Pavilion of Far-reaching Fragrance,"

in Gyeongbokgung Palace,

is one of the loveliest spots in Seoul.

(ColorSplash app in addition to snapseed

used for both of these images.)

...and the other from the opposite side of S. Korea,

from the coastal city of Sokcho:

"Red Doors, Sokcho, Korea"

(Abai village neighborhood)

So, if you happen to be in New York City 

February 22-28,

these images will be among those on display

at the SOHO Gallery for Digital Art...

Check out the rest of the winners and runners-up;

so compelling, and all taken and edited solely with mobile devices.

It's such a thrill and privilege to know that a couple of my iphoneographic efforts 

will be on display with all of these great images...

a week of symmetry and its surreal revelations...

A week ago, I took my iPhone with me on my morning run--a glorious autumn morning in Sabino Canyon, great for reflection shots...

...Later that evening I was playing around with a couple of the scenes--turned one into a black-and-white, and then thought it might be fun to 'mirror' the black and white version, lining it up with the original color photo, using the PicFrame app to place the photos side-by-side, and then 'erasing' the space between the photos by reducing the width to zero; below is the result:

A bit trippy; I was pleased with how it turned out.

So, the next day, while on my lunch break, I thought I'd play around with 'mirroring' another photo--from a recent trail-run into Bear Canyon. When I finished flipping the photo and placing it next to the original, I was surprised by what I saw staring back at me:

Symmetry brings out unforeseen patterns;

the brain wants to impose sense;

faces and anthropomorphic figures pop out.

Surreal.

So then--back to a reflective landscape from Sabino Canyon--

cottonwoods glowing under the desert sun...

I was floored by the result: 

 Whoa.

That face at the bottom...

With its enigmatic Mona-Lisa-smile--

serendipity of underwater undulations in the sand and gravel...

Onto a monsoon downpour over the desert--

 vague notions of a UFO in the sky;

weather marching ominously over the saguaros:

 From the Sonoran desert to Seoul--from landscapes to architectural details--the roof of the Throne Hall of Gyeongbok Palace--flipped on its side and mirrored:

 --fractal, almost...

And then from the traditional to the post-modern, still in Seoul--Daniel Liebeskind's "Tangent" (HQ for Hyuundai Development Company), "cubed:"

...back to landscape.
Can you recognize where this melting scene comes from?

 (Is that a rock-star's face in the middle?)

Mt. Rainier.

The idea of faces--I went back to my Sabino Canyon landscape with the eerie face--decided to triple it:

Without getting overly theological,

it's interesting to see a trinitarian head appear where,

in nature, there's nothing...

Back to Seoul:

a floating roof, 

guarded by two 'haetae:'

More architecture--the Loreto Chapel's 'miraculous' spiral staircase in Santa Fe, NM...
the spiral becomes the infinitely impossible:

 Radial symmetry can be hypnotic.

Some sculpture--the 'tree of hearts' on a jetty jutting out into the Sea of Japan,
in Sokcho, along the NE coast of S. Korea:

St. Louis' Gateway Arch becomes a gaping celestial maw:

The 18th-century San Francisco de Asis adobe church in Taos, NM
transforms into an evocation of a moai head from Easter Island, no? 

And now, back to Tucson for something from just a few hours ago. 
With some out-of-town friends, we went for an evening walk in Sabino Canyon...this time, my eye looking for shadow-and-rock jutting into the sky, wondering what symmetry will reveal...Below, a before-and-after comparison of a mountaintop:

And here's a close-up of the cropped-copied-and-rotated end-result:

 Vaguely Mayan?

A carved bar of gold?

Eagles? Foxes? Jaguar heads?

To conclude,

a couple more scenes from Seoul--

Korean architecture just seems to lend itself to 

this kaleidoscopic treatment: 

--one of the stone 'haetae' (mythical fire-eating dragon-dogs) guardian statues in front of Gwanghwamun gate, the main ceremonial entrance to the Joseon-dynasty-era Gyeongbok Palace, in the center of Seoul. 

This last one is a 'transplant'--I'd taken the photo (of Bigak pavilion, a monument on a busy intersection in Seoul) with my Canon, but then e-mailed it to my iPhone so I could play with it with PicFrame--the intricately painted eaves, coming at you from the night sky...

What's coming at you? What do you see?

submissions...from a far shore to the backyard

For what it's worth, here are my five submissions for

The Mobile Photo Awards.

From Sokcho, South Korea...

...to Seoul's Gyeongbok-gung Palace...

...to a cactus bloom in the backyard here in Tucson;

ephemeral color among the spikes--

each flower lasts for just a day:

a couple of Friday links, and a few NM scenes

Some recent news about Snapseed...

Here's an article from the idownload blog

and then a video tutorial by the same iPhotographer, Justin Balog:

...and his website has lots of cool stuff...

===========================

--and a photo I snapseeded,

from last summer in Korea;

the folks at AFAR.com liked it--

it was a runner-up in their recent Catch!Eat contest.

Below is a link to the highlight:

"Last minute postcards...and NOODLES!"

===================================

I spent a few days in New Mexico right before the school-year began a couple of weeks ago--my first time to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos...A very full short trip, involving eating copious amounts of red and green chile, trail running along the Rio Grande, and admiring adobe architecture...Here are a few scenes, all iPhone shots that have been snapseeded

 --just over the border from AZ into NW New Mexico--approaching the Zuni Pueblo...

--wildflowers near Enchanted Mesa, near the Acoma Pueblo...

--the iconic adobe church of San Francisco de Asis, in Ranchos de Taos... 

--bridge above the Rio Grande Gorge; 800 ft above the river... 

 --Taos Pueblo and Taos Mountain, under a threatening monsoon sky...

--19th c. French Romanesque Cathedral in Santa Fe; the steeples were never built...