...in iPhoneography Central's "Apps Uncovered"

Last week, iphoneographycentral.com published the recent installment in their "Apps Uncovered" series...and I'm honored to have two of my 'snapseeded' photos included:

"Red Doors, Sokcho"

Backstory/Apps Used: --like stepping back in time, this seaside district of Sokcho, S.Korea; a relic of the Korean War--the houses of N.Korean refugees and their descendants in the "Abai village" neighborhood (snapseed & colorsplash apps used; this photo among the "Honorable Mentions" in this year's Mobile Photo Awards)

     For "Red doors, Sokcho"--I took this with an iPhone4 a couple of summers ago. Not far from the location of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, Sokcho, South Korea has a frontier-feel. (The setting is gorgeous--between mountains and the sea, but lax zoning laws have led to haphazard construction.) The neighborhood where I saw this streetscape is a relic of the Korean War--on a spit of land between a lagoon and the sea, refugees from what would become North Korea built makeshift dwellings, thinking these would be just for the short-term... When the DMZ was drawn in 1953, they found themselves stranded, and this neighborhood has now been home to a several generations of these N. Korean descendants. It feels like a different world from the wifi-and-caffeinated frenzy of Seoul. I used snapseed and the ColorSplash apps for this scene. ColorSplash allowed me to isolate the red doors and shirt stripes, converting the rest of the scene into greyscale. Then I used snapseed's 'tilt-shift' filter and the 'white balance' option found among the 'tune image' options. Combining the 'hyper'-sepia tone and the red accents reminded me of the traditional color scheme used in many older Korean scroll-paintings.

"Bear Canyon, evening"

Backstory/Apps Used: I took the photo with my iPhone5 a few months ago while on a trail-run in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains on the edge of Tucson, Arizona. Winter evening light is just gorgeous in the desert. I used snapseed to convert the shot into a black-and-white scene, then used ''white balance' in the 'tune image' to warm up the scene. I also used the 'drama' filter to play with the contrast. The 'tilt-shift' filter in snapseed and then the "BigLens" app allowed me to smoothen out the sky.

A week off: spring landscapes, downtown, and close to home

The school district I work for gave us a long spring-break this year: the week before AND the Monday after Easte--off! Always good for mental health...

So, here's some of what caught my eye over the past week-and-a-day...

My wife and I went for a hike in Catalina State Park, just north of Tucson--the winter rains came at the right time for spring wildflowers in the desert:

While not as spectacular as the spring of 2010, it's always worthwhile 

to go for a hike in the desert when the wildflowers are out...

lupine, Mexican gold poppies, owl clover

(AND, incidentally, the photo above was featured 

on the local TV news last Tuesday.)

...so ephemeral...

Spring runoff, flowing water in the desert, saguaro reflections...

While running the loop in Saguaro National Park, on the city's eastern edge,

I noticed this saguaro-skeleton

with its signature downturned arms:

Just a few years ago, it looked like this:

 Memento mori, from a cactus...

A couple of downtown evenings:

Late-night coffee-and-dessert at the Cup Café in the 1919 Hotel Congress:

No longer a motel,

but this vintage neon sign has survived:

And one of the best restaurants in Tucson,

Downtown Kitchen & Cocktails:

Some street-art--on the corner of 4th and University, just north of downtown, just east of the Univ. of AZ:

Seeing this, this phrase came to mind: "Read me a good story, and I'll never forget..."

love how the b&w ants seem to pop off the brick...

and a bit of the ColorSplash app here, to make the 'bouquets' stand out.

Pistols. Flowers. Ant.

Hmm...

Today--a trail-run into Bear Canyon...

...four miles in, four miles out: crisscrossing a seasonal stream,

a few boulders and a couple of switchbacks,

trail lined with wildflowers this time of year...

 ...with Seven Falls as the destination:

(I love these guys--not that common,

Coulter's hibiscus, a.k.a. desert rosemallow)

On the way to Bear Canyon, 

a stand of cottonwoods I keep returning to:

 Closer to home, something abstract:

Well, actually, inside home, these permutations;

here's the original image:

(looking up in the entryway)

And who can resist a bird's nest?

 --on the back patio--the mother dove left for a few minutes, so I thought I would check on the two babies (dovelets? dovelings? chicks?) The mother dove did come back...all is well...

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...and a fun surprise from last night--

I found out that this photo, "nighthawks for noodles,"

was featured in this week's "Through the lens of an iphone" showcase

by iphoneography.com

 

Taken on my last night in Seoul, a couple of summers ago...

An honor to be included...

SNOW in Tucson! School, Sabino Canyon, and Saguaro National Park

During the work-week, I am a teacher...

...and so, yesterday in Tucson, when the rain began to change over to snow, I just had to let my students go outside. For this particular young woman--originally from Africa--it was the first time she'd ever seen the white stuff falling from the sky:

Snow in Tucson is a rare treat; the last time kids in this desert city enjoyed it was six years ago, before I moved here. 

As it began to accumulate, the only sane and humane thing for me to do was to let them go outside and have a snowball fight:

By mid-afternoon, the clouds had begun to lift;

I went for a hike in Sabino Canyon after work--

the lower-elevation snow was melting quickly... 

...but then the clouds began to roll back in...

...and by dinner-time, it was snowing--AND sticking--again.

It snowed for most of the evening.

So, this morning, I got up early and drove out to Saguaro National Park East, (about a 15 minute drive from where we live), hoping that if I got there before the sun came up, I'd beat the melting.

I got my wish. 

For years, I've wanted to see the rare spectacle of a snow-covered saguaro-forest...

The timing was perfect: today and tomorrow are school-holidays--it's the annual Tucson Rodeo/Fiesta de los Vaqueros. It might have been overpoweringly tempting to call in sick, had I not already had the day off...
You might get snow down in the Tucson basin, oh, maybe once a decade or so. The mountains get blanketed several times each winter, but it's rare that the snow-line drops below three- or four-thousand feet...

Frosted ocotillos looking so wintry...

...but look closely: you'll see the new spring leaf-buds under the snow:

As soon as the sun rose over the ridge of the Rincon Mountains,

I could hear the drip-drip-drip of the melting begin...

Sun, snow, and saguaros...

By mid-day, the blanket of white was a memory...

So ephemeral, snow in the desert...

Next time--when? 

It might be years from now.

By then, who knows what mobile photography will be like?

[For more snow-in-the-desert-photos (non-iphone), 

see my other blog.]

2013, day one: deer and snowcapped mountains

The first of the year dawned bright and cold here in southern Arizona. With yesterday's clouds lifting overnight, we woke up to freshly snowcapped Santa Catalina Mountains on the horizon; a perfect winter morning in the desert...a perfect day for my wife and I to take a hike. 

We weren't on the trail for five minutes yet, when:

...and then the deer practically pranced across our trail: 

...stopped to pick a fruit from a barrel cactus: 

 ...a bit of chewing:

...and finally, off to graze elsewhere:

A perfect winter day:

snowcapped Thimble Peak

above the cottonwoods in Sabino Canyon,

still hanging on to the last of last autumn's color:

Hiking boots, a bottle of water, some sunscreen...and the iPhone--all you need...

Slot Canyon landscapes, 'surrealized' with PicFrame

KaleidaCam is a great app for 'kaleidoscoping' photos, but for maximum control when playing with radial symmetry, PicFrame is more 'fine-tune-able.'

Thinking back to a couple of summers ago, when my wife and I spent some time in northern Arizona, I thought that some of the photos I took in Antelope Canyon--an already naturally surreal landscape--would be fun to manipulate into impossibly surreal landscapes using PicFrame...

First, a couple of examples showing the original landscape-shot and the radial-symmetry-'surrealization' side-by-side:

(These are all 'transplanted' snapseeded shots--

I took them with my Canon, but e-mailed the photos to 

my iPhone so I could edit them with snapseed and PicFrame--

so, not strictly 'iphoneography.')

The desert magic of erosion and symmetry:

For this last one--

the original, then with PicFrame, 

and then the cartoonish serendipity of the KaleidaCam app:

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