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."

backyard birds and blooms, trailrun, saguaro permutations

Spring continues here in the Sonoran Desert...

Some doves built a nest in our backyard; it's amazing how fast the chicks grow--I took the two photos below with my iPhone5, just six days apart:

The nest is up under the patio roof--kind of dark there...

snapseed is perfect for 'brightening up the exposure--

before-and-after:

A few feet from the patio, a ferocactus in fiery bloom: 

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

Now, for trailrun scenes: 

down by the creek in Sabino Canyon this morning: 

bees loving the palo verde trees in bloom:

hedgehog cactus starting to bloom on the exposed hillsides:

(I have yet to get one of those macro clip-on lenses for the iPhone;

you can get remarkably close almost-'macro' shots by just holding still

and selecting the focus area on the touch-screen.)

above Sabino Canyon, lined with cottonwoods getting greener each day,

some glorious ocotillo in bloom:

The clarity of the scarlet blooms against the sky got me thinking that this scene would be a good candidate for a particular 'grunge filter' effect that I like: photographically real images imposed on a texture that mimics parchment or heavy watercolor-paper, for a pseudo-illuminated-manuscript effect:

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

And now for some saguaro permutations--

using symmetry and isolation against the sky

for a surreal effect.

Here's the original shot,

of my favorite pair of saguaros

near Sabino Canyon:

Cropping the tops,

then using (actually, repurposing) PicFrame app

in order to get a mirror image:

...and then re-cropping 

and re-mirroring the image to end up with this:

...again--

imposing the photographically-real

on a texture that evokes older methods of illustration,

using the 'grunge filter' in snapseed...

...and one more,

a color version:

In this week's JUXT showcase, "not quite twins"

I'm so honored to have one of my images featured in this week's "1000 Word showcase" by the team of mobile artists JUXT:

I took this just over a week ago, down at the Mission San Xavier (the same day I took the photos for the previous post.)..."Forced" to come up with a title when I submitted it to JUXT's Flickr group, I ended up with "not quite twins."  

Below is what I wrote for the showcase, including how I created the image:

A few days ago I was able to leave work earlier than usual–a clear and warm spring afternoon–so I decided to go down to the Mission San Xavier del Bac. I hadn’t been in a while, and It’s only a 15 minute drive from downtown Tucson; the combination of desert sky, Native American culture and 18th-century Spanish colonial architecture is endlessly photogenic. The Mission was originally founded in 1692, and the present structure dates from the 1780′s. The twin-towered facade is dominated by simple Moorish-influenced towers flanking an intricate Baroque entryway. The eastern tower was never completed–to my eye, it’s the asymmetry that makes the proportions more interesting. (The almost-symmetry of human faces is what often gives us visual personality, and it’s fascinating to find it in man-made structures.) The whitewashed towers with crisp shadows against the afternoon sky reminded me of some of Belgian painter Magritte’s famously surreal scenes–which made me want to experiment with isolating some of the Mission’s architectural details against the sky.

First I used Michael Baronovic’s (@MishoBaranovic) new Perspective Correct app to straighten the lines of the towers. Then I cropped the bottom, ‘ground’-half, off. Using PicFrame app, I ‘mirrored’ the remaining facade, eliminating the frame between the two sections of the vertical diptych, resulting in a seamless, symmetrical, floating-in-the-sky structure. For the rest, I used snapseed. I de-saturated the image, then used the grunge filter, choosing a texture that I find mimics parchment or handmade-paper. I like the juxtaposition of photographically realistic detail imposed on a background that evokes old surfaces used for illuminated manuscripts and East Asian scroll paintings. Finally, I warmed the temperature a bit to get a sepia tone, finishing with the center focus tool for a vignette effect.

(Last November was when I first started to play around with using cropped symmetry for a surreal effect. To see those first experiments, click here.)

10 permutations; revelations of backlit symmetry

Ten permutations of a single image, 

using the PicFrameApp along with Snapseed...

continuing to play with cropping and symmetry...

(scroll to the bottom to find out what you're looking at, 
or to confirm your guess)

Below,

the "source material," 

from a few weeks ago:

Above, the result of editing 

the 'original,' below,

an unfurling tulip in a vase on our coffee table,

backlit at sunset:

Tulip. Sunset. Surreal.

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?