"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...

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

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:

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: