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...

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.

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?