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.)

"Ominous Chicken Talk"...streetscape

In this week's "Capturing the Moment" showcase by Mobiography, this was one of the featured photos:

 "Ominous Chicken Talk"

(Honored to be included, and yep, I had fun with this title...)

I drive by this street corner in Tucson very often. Finally, on a recent Sunday morning, the parking lot deserted, I pulled over to take a few photos. The juxtaposition of these oversized animal sculptures next to an otherwise nondescript strip-mall makes me smile every time I pass them--Is it whimsical? Gratuitous? Intentionally surreal? Mere kitsch, or knowingly dadaist? 

I went back and forth between the snapseed and scratchcam apps to edit this scene, which I took on my iPhone5. I liked the rectangular 'fold' overlay on this scene because it frames the chicken in a way to make it seem that it's talking to the giraffe. But WHY does the chicken pay more for gold? And WHY is the giraffe even there? (is there a giraffe-ransom involved?) And why would I want to come here to sell my gold? Endless questions...

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And, for breaking out of a creative slump, check out this recent article, "Breaking out of the Photographer Slump," from We Are Juxt...and in it you'll find some images and a few words of mine among others' useful comments and photos:

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.)

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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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?