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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faces, restaurants, landscapes

The first week of October was a vacation-week for me. (The school district I work for tried something new this year: after the first quarter, a week off--a welcome break for students AND teachers.) Good timing, as we had an out-of-town friend and family reunion at our home in Tucson...which led to walks in the desert and eating out...and some iphoneography...

So, a few local highlights for this posting.

First, some Mexican folk-art faces, on the walls and floating above the tables in Elvira's, down in Tubac, about an hour south of Tucson.

And, from what is truly one of the best restaurants in southern Arizona, 

downtown Tucson's Café Poca Cosa:

Close to home--a bloom on a cactus in the backyard:

...out of the backyard, into the open desert...

(fun with the 'grunge' filter  for the AutoStitch panorama above and the 

square shot below)

The other night, on the way to some friends' for dinner, I just had to pull over to get this phone-shot--check out the 'double-helix' cloud on the right:

...and then as the sunset continued to 'ripen,' the strands got taller and pinker:

(PicFrame used to create the 'mosaics'.)

--from down in Tumacácori, the Santa Cruz Chili Co., across from the old Spanish mission.

One of my new favorite apps on my iPhone is ColorSplash; I used it on the above cactus flower and chili sign photos...here are a couple more photos edited with it--these are 'transplants'--photos taken with a different camera that I e-mailed to my iPhone specifically to edit with snapseed and ColorSplash--fun with selective desaturation:

--seeing the landscape through my wife's eyes, 

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River, just south of Page, AZ 

...and back in Tucson; reflection of autumn color (which peaks in December) 
along the creek in Sabino Canyon

Google just acquired NIK software...and a couple of ColorSplash reflections

Google has just acquired Snapseed. Read more here

So...now Snapseed is to Google as Instagram is to Facebook, it seems...

Interesting to see where this is all going...

A couple of mountain-reflection scenes to post tonight.

I was going through some photos from this past summer on my iPhone; 

thought this scene of Goat Lake in the Central Cascades

would be fun to edit with the ColorSplash app in addition to snapseed:

Below, this is a 'transplanted' scene--taken several years ago at Upper Tipsoo Lake near Mt. Rainier...I e-mailed it to my iPhone in order to play with it using snapseed and ColorSplash as well:

Reflections can be as compelling as what they reflect...like a dream can seem more real than the awakening...

"early blooms" and 'updated' Peruvian scenes

...always a fun surprise to see a photo published in the morning paper:

(taken with my iPhone after a run in Sabino Canyon;

used snapseed to 'brighten' the flowers a bit,

and then slight 'tilt-shifting' to blur the top of the cactus)

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A couple of weeks ago, I 'rehabilitated' some old snapshots of Switzerland;

 this week I did the same for some photos from a trip to Perú.

On the flight down to South America, our camera got left on the plane! Of all places to be--Perú!--with NO camera!? So we had to buy a camera down there--I still wasn't ready yet to make the switch to digital, which would have been prohibitively expensive anyway, given our travel budget...So we got a point-and-shoot film camera and made do.

Thinking back, it was like having a 'toy camera' of sorts...and so I went for the 'toy camera' effect when editing these 'transplanted' shots with snapseed--using plenty of vignetting and tilt/shifting or 'center-focusing.'

The 'campiña' (countryside) outside of Arequipa,

(Perú's second-largest city, about 8000 feet up on an Andean plateau

in the south of the country)

with the El Misti volcano looming above

pre-Inca terraces still being farmed:

 One of the baroque 'sillar' (white volcanic stone) courtyards

built during the colonial era in Arequipa:

The next four photos are also from Arequipa. In 1580, just four decades after the Spanish founded the city, the Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena was established. Wealthy families paid lavish dowries in order for their daughters to become nuns here. (The existence of servants' and slaves' quarters, along with the nuns' lodging, testifies to the curious luxury that accompanied the isolation here.) A veritable city-within-a-city, this complex has been open to the public since the 1970's.

Now, down to the arid coast around Lima. The capital itself is dotted with excavations of pre-columbian cultures, but in Pachacámac, about 18 miles/30 km SE of the city, the ruins literally spill out of the sandy hills above the ocean. I visited mid-week--there seemed to be more archaeologists than tourists. Temples and tombs cause archaeologists to continually push back the date for the origins of civilization in this part of South America.  Pachacámac is one of the easiest-to-get-to pre-Inca locations to visit and learn more about these societies. On a quiet mid-week visit, it's sobering to wander the ruins of was once a vibrant complex...

 ...and below is the 'pre-Snapseed' snapshot; using a 'gentle touch' with one of the 'drama' filters brings out the texture of the sand, and then vignetting draws your eye toward the zig-zagging passageway...

a girl and her sheep,

on the Altiplano on the way to the Cañon del Colca:

mid-morning in

Machu Picchú:

'rehabilitated' from years ago: snapshots of Switzerland

Back in the mostly pre-digital-camera-era of the late 1990's, I went to Switzerland--twice: once for a summer-study-abroad between my junior and senior years in college, and then a few years later, during the year I lived in Paris. With a cheap point-and-shoot and/or a disposable panorama camera, I attempted to capture the almost impossibly scenic Alpine landscapes...

A few years ago, during a couple of days when I was home-from-work, sick, I scanned those snapshots into the computer, and the past few days I've been 'snapseeding' them--it's amazing how over- or under-exposed scenes from a point-and-shoot film camera years ago can be 'rehabilitated.' So, these are some snapshots that have been 'transplanted' and 'snapseeded.' Maybe you have some photos sitting in a box or stuck in an album that you've always wanted to tweak...Snapseed is ideal...

It's a village, it's a castle, it's a cheese--Gruyères!

Well above the tree-line, at the Julierpass--bovine encounter:

Mount Pilatus, the Kappellbrücke and its 14th-century Wasserturm: picture-postcard Lucerne:

 The lakefront in Neuchâtel, where I spent most of that study-abroad summer:

Taken with the disposable panorama-camera--

the Jungfrau massif: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks 

in the Berner Oberland, from the Schilthorn:

Looking down from the cable-car gondola going up the Schilthorn: 

  ...while hiking down the Schilthorn back to Mürren and the Lauterbrunnen Valley:

...another view of the glaciated Eiger and the Mönch peaks:

...on the lake, near Lucerne: 

...Alphorn players rehearsing on a Sunday morning in the Roman theater in Martigny:

from the Château de Tourbillon, looking over Sion

in the Rhône valley:

...and another view from the Château de Tourbillon, over to the Valère castle/basilica: 

High above Sion, the Lac des Dix, with its glacial 'flour'-color:

...and the tremendous dam that holds those waters back,

one of the largest and highest in Europe (larger than the Great Pyramid, incidentally):

sunflowers in a window in Zürich:

...and hiking the Heidiland Trial in spring near Maienfeld:

With the numerous filters available in snapseed, you can easily re-focus, blur, bring out color, lighten shadow, crop, frame--the editing possibilities are intuitive and almost endless...

Correcting even images that were originally non-digital--have fun!

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