"are smartphones killing memories?"...seeing like Monet?...and Arch views

Perhaps you've seen this piece, from a couple of days ago on the BBC:

"Are smartphones killing memories?"

If you're interested in mobile photography at all, whether as a part-time hobby or as an addictive avocation, these seven minutes are worth your time.

I've been thinking about this for while now, even before I dove into the iPhone-world...

There is so much to be said (ad nauseam) for 'being in the moment'...and yet so much to be gained from being able to document the day-to-day with such ease...

Perhaps you've heard the expression from Wordsworth--yes, the 18th-19th-c. poet, who spoke of the 'inward eye, the bliss of solitude'...the power of visual memories...

Does constant photographing enhance or diminish our capacity to truly look and remember, to learn how to see? There's the 'professional seeing' that photographers learn...but then there's the purely personal gaze--for one's own enjoyment and thoughts...With the constant distraction of documenting and (over)sharing, are we remembering what we lose when we only think we're gaining? Is our 'inward eye' morphing into a 3- or 4-inch screen we hold in the palm of our hands? When there's only the 'joy' of sharing on social networks, is there any room for the 'bliss of solitude?'


In our world of constant snapshots, we need to remember how to gaze purposefully, not just fleetingly.

Then again, I think of the photographers and artists who are using the medium of smartphone-cameras as a way to visually meditate, to freeze their deep gazes...or to keep them alive...

I'm reminded of the series of paintings that Monet created--the façades of the Rouen Cathedral, and the water lilies at Giverny. Those have become so well-known, clichéd even--but how many people today are able to look at one scene so deeply, over and over again? Obsession is a word that might be used, yes, but not gratuitous...


A couple of years ago, I went to St. Louis for a work conference. It was just a few days, but I had the mornings and late afternoons to myself--I found myself going for runs in the park along the Mississippi River, beneath the Gateway Arch. It's such an incredible structure--despite its visual familiarity, its audacity of form is just amazing--standing underneath its deceptive simplicity--no photograph can translate its scale...
...I did take a few photos, though, with my iPhone...

Recently, I've been going back to those scenes; as I've become more familiar and more comfortable with different photo-apps, I've been wanting to play with them--looking back and seeing the geometry and scale of the Arch and trying to, well, 'translate' the structure in different ways. Call it an obsession, if you want. But Monet's way of seeing--and I'm not trying to compare my edits to his work--but just trying to learn from how he saw...and how, even without brush, palette, and canvas, one can still learn how to see...and how the smartphone-camera can be involved...

(apps used, in addition to snapseed--picframe, scratchcam, laminar, distressedfx)

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?

near and far, before and after

To begin with, the first desert poppies of the spring: 

(Filters used: center focus and tilt-and-shift, which also allows for playing with brightness and saturation.) A few afternoons ago, I went for a hike--iPhone in hand. In Rattlesnake Canyon in the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains here in Tucson, the wildflowers are several weeks early this year.

After last week's initial posting, I thought I should include some more before-and-after comparisons, to show more clearly what snapseed can allow you to do.

So, back to Sabino Canyon, to one of the first scenes that showed me how useful snapseed can be:

To the left, this is the 'before' version, the original iPhotograph.


With the sun behind the ridge, the shapes and colors of the riparian vegetation get lost; it's a 'throw-away' shot that doesn't really convey the landscape...




But then, using the 'drama' filter and then playing with the brightness, contrast, and 'ambiance' functions of the 'tune image' filter, the colors of the cottonwood, ash, and sycamore trees, along with some of the saguaros on the hillside, can stand out. With a bit of cropping, below is the 'after' image, which truly shows what this riparian desert canyon looks like in late autumn in southern Arizona:

Now, an urban scene--St. Louis, seen from the observation deck at the top of the Gateway Arch:

Stitched together using the AutoStitch app, I thought this view of downtown would be fun as a 'toy-miniature' scene. The tilt-and-shift filter was used to 'miniaturize' the cityscape, and then to add the corner vignettes, I chose one of the the 'dark styles' in the center focus filter:

From the Midwest to the Southeast--

a Victorian building in Augusta, GA:

The whimsical placing of a horse-statue on the balcony of a Victorian brick building lends itself to a surreal treatment, so I used the 'grunge' filter, which plays with blur, texture, and color temperature. You end up with a more compelling, atmospheric image, instead of a simple architectural documentation of a streetcorner:

Still in this city along the Savannah River, another Victorian building--the Old Cotton Exchange.


The brick-lined plaza leading from it to the Riverwalk park is home to a weekend farmer's market.




Architecture and pedestrians--the image lends itself perfectly to playing with color and scale, so this time, the tilt-and-shift filter, pure and simple--blur, saturation, brightness, and contrast all 'tweak-able' in this filter:

...true to the spirit of the place, if not totally true to the actual hue of the foliage, 

which was not quite as autumnal as the 'after'-shot would make you think...

Some more Victorian red brick, but now back out West, (yesterday)

to the mile-high mountain mining town of Bisbee,  AZ:

...slight tilt-and-shift 'filtration' of this scene. I didn't meet the owner of this 'roaming-gnome-mobile,' but it's a perfect example of the quirky side of this town. Some residents have bumper stickers that read 'Keep Bisbee Bizarre.' Below is a perfect example of some of Bisbee's 'bizarchitecturural' ornamentation--slightly tilt-shifted:

Red! I must have red! And more red for my found-object-façade!

And then, tucked in between two buildings down in Brewery Gulch...

 ...there's this stairwell--blink and you'll miss it:

A cool enough scene, but it cries out to be 'played with'--to be 'snapseeded:'

ominous sepia...

And now, from near to far, for a bit of geography, with an old French globe, 'grunge-filtered:'

Below is a 'transplanted and snapseeded' scene--

I e-mailed this photo to my iPhone in order to edit it with snapseed, using the tilt-shift filter:

A scene from Seoul's Gyeongbok-gung Palace, where, on a summer afternoon, a tea-ceremony class is being held in the old residence of the Queen Dowager. Shoes off before tea-time--always a must before entering a Korean home, whether that of royalty or of peasants... 

          ...and finally, from Corée to Centroamérica: 

(this Spanish-globe-shot snapseeded with one of the styles in the vintage filter)

Another 'transplanted' photo--looking from the roof of the Cathedral in León, Nicaragua, out over the eastern part of the city, on to the volcanoes on the horizon, with the colorful Calvario church, one of Nicaragua's 18th-century architectural gems:

"Filtered"-photography...

is it as honest as 'unfiltered?' 

Or is it like the difference between poetry and prose?

Gratuitous filtering of photos can be just that--gratuitous.

But, the field for visual play is wide open.

What does your eye see that you want other eyes to see?

Planting the seed...

So I'm starting a new blog--one of the estimated 175,000 created every day...why?

Because I couldn't find one out there that specialized in what this blog is going to feature: 'snapseeded' photos. (See disclaimer at bottom of page.)

Since getting the snapseed app a couple of months ago, I've been continuously amazed at the creative possibilities of photo-editing on my iPhone--at home, on the go, on my lunch-hour, or even while taking a stretching-break during a trail-run--I literally have a digital darkroom in the palm of my hand! And instead of being a one-trick wonder, snapseed allows the iPhoneographer/iPhotographer to play with a whole range of powerful, creative editing.

I spent a good portion of last summer abroad, and I ended up with hundreds of snapshots on my iPhone--almost as many, in fact, as I took with my 'real' camera...As soon as I downloaded snapseed, I began to experiment with those travel photos...and then after a few weeks I began to e-mail some 'regular' photos, including old, scanned pics, to my iPhone just so that I would be able to edit them with snapseed.

Whether I'm traveling elsewhere, or just in my home city, I'm always on the lookout for details and a sense of place. Proust's well-known statement, "the real voyage of discovery consists not [necessarily] in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes," is often in the back of my mind as I look around...and so I include a paraphrase of his quote in this blog's title.

A few snapseeded scenes, then, to get started, from Arizona and beyond:
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(for larger views, simply click on any of the photos)

close-up of an agave in AZ; I love the 'x-ray' imprint of the leaves...

taken on iPhone, converted to b&w with snapseed,

then used the 'center focus' and 'drama' filters

on an evening hike in Sabino Canyon, on the NE edge of Tucson, AZ

the sun had already set behind the ridge, and the photo

would otherwise have been too dark;

with a few finger swipes--the exposure and lighting corrected

this panorama of downtown St. Louis, MO stitched with the AutoStitch app,

then 'miniaturized' for a toy model effect

using the 'tilt&shift' filter on snapseed

this scene in León, Nicaragua, is a 'transplanted' photo--

taken, pre-iPhone era, when my wife and I lived in Central America;

I e-mailed it to my phone so that I could edit it with snapseed,

using various configurations of the 'tilt&shift' and 'center focus' filters

in order to isolate the one girl looking back

another 'transplant,' this one of an old scanned photo,

a view of Paris from the south bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral,

converting to sepia tone and using the 'tilt&shift' and 'center focus'

to focus on the cityscape in the middle distance

back to a 'completely iphoneographic' snapshot,

this detail of a wall in the Bukchon neighborhood in Seoul, S. Korea,

using one of the 'grunge' filters

and another 'transplanted photo'--an overview of central Seoul,

'tilt-shifted' with Gwanghwamun Plaza,

the 14th-c. Gyeongbok-gung Palace,

and the blue-tile-roofed Cheongwadae (the Presidential Mansion),

taken from a high-rise, zooming northward towards the

flanks of Mt. Bugak-san

and finally, a photo I took earlier tonight,

showing the almost 'macro'-possibilities of iphoneography

along with the 'center-focus' snapseed filter,

the 'title photo' for the blog--

my 'signature-chop' ('toh-jahng' in Korean)...

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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...