A couple of "Honorable Mentions!"

For the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards "Travel" category,

two of my submissions made "Honorable Mention!"

One from Seoul:

Hyangweonjeon, or "The Pavilion of Far-reaching Fragrance,"

in Gyeongbokgung Palace,

is one of the loveliest spots in Seoul.

(ColorSplash app in addition to snapseed

used for both of these images.)

...and the other from the opposite side of S. Korea,

from the coastal city of Sokcho:

"Red Doors, Sokcho, Korea"

(Abai village neighborhood)

So, if you happen to be in New York City 

February 22-28,

these images will be among those on display

at the SOHO Gallery for Digital Art...

Check out the rest of the winners and runners-up;

so compelling, and all taken and edited solely with mobile devices.

It's such a thrill and privilege to know that a couple of my iphoneographic efforts 

will be on display with all of these great images...

From the highest peak in the Tucson Mountains

I've been back in the classroom for a couple of days now...

Last Thursday, though, on a clear cold morning, I went for a hike in the Tucson Mountains. On the western edge of the city, this the lowest mountain range in the area, but from its highest point, Wasson Peak, you get 360-degree views over the entire area: city, wilderness and more peaks on the far horizons.

Water, sunscreen, and iphone...

it's a 7-mile round-trip desert hike with about a two-thousand-foot elevation gain.

(Do NOT do this hike in the summer; there is NO shade...but perfect from late fall through early spring.)

About 2/3 of the way up, this is the view toward the SW,

across the agricultural land of the Tohono O'odham nation,

toward Baboquivari Peak,

the 'navel of the world' in their native cosmology:

No shortage of cholla cactus along the rocky trail...

Here, looking south down the mountain range

toward the distant Santa Rita Mountains.

I played with the 'dark 1' option in the 'drama' filters for the scene above,

then with the black-and-white filter for the version below,

adjusting the white balance in the 'tune image' filter;

I like the imperfection of the flare, shooting

directly into the low sun...

...approaching the summit on the left:

(seven photos fused together with the AutoStitch app)

 Finally, at the peak--4687ft/1429m...

looking off to the NNW toward Picacho Peak...

Not as lofty as the 9000+ ft. peaks in the Santa Catalinas and the Rincons, but still high enough to feel on top of the world...

Below,
--looking NORTH toward the Tortolita Mtns
--looking from the NE to the E toward the Santa Catalina Mtns, across Oro Valley & Tucson
--looking SOUTH down the Tucson Mtns toward the distant Santa Rita Mtns
--looking toward the WEST across the Avra Valley

(made with PicFrame app)

And finally, one more saguaro-studded scene,

using 'tilt-shift' & one of the relatively new 'retrolux' filters:

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

Incidentally, in the January NIK software newsletter,

in the "Spotlight on Snapseed" section

THIS blog is featured...

Thanks, NIK!

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...

2012: through my iPhone--12 shots...and 'winners'

As 2012 comes to its end--

a sampling of things seen over the past twelve months 

through the lens of my iPhone and edited with snapseed...

Landscapes & seasons--

 Arizona, Washington, New Mexico, Georgia

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

January:

--looking down into Sabino Canyon, from January 1st 2012 New Year's Day hike; 

'we are but dust and shadow'...
(panorama with AutoStitch app)

February:

--Spring came early to the Sonoran desert

after a rainy winter; 

by the end of February there were poppies already blooming...

March:

--an evening hike in Catalina State Park

April:

--prickly pear cactus blossoms

May:

--saguaros in bloom;

(this shot got printed in the Tucson paper)

June:

--the beginnings of the monsoon in the desert,

saguaro fruit ripening and evening rainbow...

July:

--back to the Pacific Northwest;

a summer hike up to Colchuck Lake, beneath Dragontail Peak and Aasgard Pass,

Central Cascades, WA

August:

--road-trip through New Mexico;

Enchanted Mesa near the Acoma Pueblo

(playing with COLORSPLASH)

September:

--rain pouring, like a cosmic bucket;

I had my iPhone with me on a morning run...

late summer monsoon over Tucson

October:

--faces in Tubac,

Mexican sculpture suspended from the ceiling,

Elvira's restaurant

November:

--first foray into the serendipitous surreal,

the simple act of symmetry revealing the unexpected face,

reflection in Sabino Canyon

(using PICFRAME for mirroring)

December:

--surreal along the Savannah River,

running on the GA/SC border;

cold at the water's edge...

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

And, over the past year, three photos of mine have been winners
in a few of AFAR.COM's travel highlight contests, all iPhone shots:

http://www.afar.com/afar/catch-contest-week-1-winners

http://www.afar.com/afar/catch-contest-week-2-winners

http://www.afar.com/afar/catch-belgium-contest-week-2-winners

Landscapes and food--iPhone always at hand, eyes always seeing...

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:

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

with KaleidaCam app: saguaro blossoms and tea leaves

Recent experimentation with symmetry (see last couple of posts) led me to another iphone photo-editing app: KaleidaCam. 

I began playing with it while waiting for a plane, actually...and then sent the result to my wife, who said it took her a couple of minutes to realize what she was looking at:

Yeah. Circular-nose-ridge: creepy.

Front-camera self-portraits maybe aren't the best shots

for kaleidoscopic treatment.

So, on to something more pleasant--saguaro blooms.

Above, the original photo from this past spring,

and below--its permutations:

Still dealing with something organic, a bowl of tea-leaves:

Amazing that some people still look into such things for information about the future... 
(but anything random seems to take on meaning when radial symmetry is applied)

...and, what with the 2012 baqtun coming up on the winter solstice, 

I thought the scene looked vaguely Mayan:

And to end with--from a dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant in L.A.--all of the banchan side-dishes, hands holding chopsticks, and grilling meat--the star of dinner: