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...

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

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...

"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:

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

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/

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

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

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

Not part of  'the five,'

but this one soap-shop window-front scene 

from Barcelona could sum it all up:

a 'painterly' scene along the Dordogne...

An evening scene from several weeks ago:

...sunset light along the Dordogne River in the SW of France, 
the old bastide ('fortified town') of Sainte-Foy-la-Grande...

This week, I'm honored to have this photo featured on iART Chronicles--one of the images chosen for "Painterly Mobile Art Monday." 

While in France, I began experimenting more with "painterly" effects in mobile photography editing...If you're curious, this flickr group shows what other mobile photographers are doing with this...

this summer's scenic runs: Georgia, France, Spain...and back to Arizona

With the new school-year starting less than a week after our return from Europe, there hasn't been time yet to go back and finish organizing/editing the hundreds of photos on my iPhone...Each day, two or three get done in the afternoon...

As a starting point, then, for posting some of those scenes here: some of this summer's scenic runs...A while back I got one of those hand-strappy-water-bottles for running, and conveniently enough, the ID zipper pocket on the side just fits my iPhone:

(from yesterday morning in Saguaro Nat'l Park)

So, when I'm not doing my routine neighborhood-morning-run, 

my iPhone often comes with me...

...as it did along the trail between the Savannah River and the Augusta Canal, when I was in Georgia back in June:

...Spanish-moss...19th-c. architecture...and lots of water...

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

In Paris, on my first morning back in 11 years,

along the Canal St.-Martin:

(some thought-provoking street-art...)

the Cité des Sciences, Europe's biggest science museum, in the Parc de la Villette

Staying with some friends on Paris' southwestern edge,

trails in the hilly forest above St.-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse:

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

Down to the South of France--

running along the Canal du Midi, near Toulouse:

a Carpe-Diem-emblazoned-barge-with-a-bike--gotta love it...

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

And then down to Barcelona:

--along the waterfront of the Olympic Village, Frank Gehry's "Peix" (fish) sculpture: 

ahh, the Mediterranean...

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

And then, Madrid:

--starting point, in the Plaza Santa Ana, 

in front of our hotel and Hemingway's old haunt:

A statue of Federico García Lorca, in front of the Teatro Español

jogging past Goya, presiding over the entrance to The Prado

....the Parque del Buen Retiro

...the Palacio de Cristal, originally built in the 19th-c. to house

flora and fauna from the Philippines...

black swans!

across from the entrance to the Park, part of the Prado,
housed in what was once the Ballroom of the Buen Retiro Palace

storefront: Velázquez' Infanta, with a 'free the Canary Islands' slogan...

a freaky mural, while jogging back up the hill to the Plaza

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

Back to Tucson and the Sonoran Desert...

This evening, I went for a quick run in the hills around Sabino Canyon...

...enjoying some of the water that the monsoon has brought...

...and hoping to time it right for sunset:

Back home.

Now--back to work, too.

...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...)

"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)