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.)