Highlights of the Week
I might say the highlight of my week was getting back to the easel working on a painting – but it was just a little work and did not result in anything to share. I will however share some of my favorite photos from the last week (if you follow me on Flickr you may have already seen some of these). I am still without my Nikon so all of these works were taken and processed with an iPhone 3GS
Guard Rail
and by applying the TinyPlanets app to the previous image we get:
Guard Rail Planet
Another abstraction resulting from the TinyPlanets app
Tusk
This next photo did NOT involve the TinyPlanets app. I took a picture of a burr lieing on the path I often walk. I enhanced the saturation of the image and then applied the fisheye feature on the CameraBag app:
Planet Burr
Finally a photo of a larges slushy puddle in which I just pushed the saturation and cropped it a bit:
Technicolor Slush Puddle
Exploring Tiny Planet
I’ve been seeing some neat abstract photos recently but was unsure at first how they were being created. I discovered an iPhone app called Tiny Planets is the tool. Today I have been exploring the creative possibilities of that app and here are some of my results (along with the original photo):
Spiral Stairs
In addition to the Tiny Planets app I also used Photo Shop Mobile to enhance (or remove) color and contrast and for cropping before or after transformation
Abstract 110407-b
The results can be quite unpredictable. Here is what a tire track in the mud can turn into:
In this following example, I used the fish eye view on the CameraBag app in order to accentuate the circular form of the Tiny Planet transformation.
Finally I took a simple photo of a sidewalk, curb and snow.
With a little color saturation enhancement I achieved this result:
Just Follow This Sidewalk
Ice in the Morning (Undersea Dreams)
At this time of year (early spring in Edmonton) there is a daily thaw-freeze cycle – by noon snow and ice are melting, running and sometimes collecting in puddles. With the below freezing temperatures overnight, that water refreezes so that in the morning there are some delightful patterns to be found in the thin layers of new ice. This photo set is all about the ice.
Abstract 110405-2752 (Ice Shards)
Abstract 110405-2769
Abstract 110405-2767
That previous photo reminds me of oceanside waves and I am amazed at how many others of these photos somehow remind of something I’d expect to see underwater.
Abstract 110405-2756
Does this last image look familiar? It is the color version of the first photo in this set.
All of these photos were taken and processed using an iPhone 3GS. PhotoShop Mobile and CameraBag were the two main apps I used for manipulating the images.
Do you have any favorites from these images? Is so, please leave a comment to let me know.
More of my photos can be seen on my Flickr Photostream.
Would I Fool You?
Could I fool you even if I tried? It is April 1st as I write this, the traditional day of trickery and practical jokes. I have to share with you today 5 photos from yesterday. All of these were taken and processed with an iPhone 3GS. I am back to iPhone photography for two reasons: 1. my Nikon D80 failed on me a couple of days ago and is going to need to go in for repairs and 2. it has finally warmed up enough in Edmonton to allow me to wander around outside with bare hands, which are necessary to operate the iPhone touch screen. I do also really like the creative possibilities of the iPhone apps.
I like that photos often are not what they first appear. I like that whole element of discovery with a good photo – the longer you look the more you see and the more you see the more possibilities that open up in the mind.
Unknown Peak and Glacier
Ice Crystals
Ice and Leaves
Air Under Ice
Snow Urchin
So anything thereto fool anybody? Probably not, only a couple of cases of titles to lead the viewer in a “false” direction. The first image is not a lovely mountain scene but a pile of dirty roadside snow after a bit of spring melting. The last photo is not of something called a snow urchin but just a clump of burrs from a burdock plant.
Funny How the (my) Brain Works
First impressions – what do you see?
I took this photo but when I looked at this image I must say I was baffled. My first impression was it was the face of some creature from a fantasy movie (or out of a nightmare).
Part of the reason this image looks the way it does is because I took the photo with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, using the Salvador 84 “lens”. That lens applies a certain mirror imaging effect to create a a “Dali-ish” surrealism.
However the my biggest block to perceiving the reality behind this image was just that I had turned it 90 degrees.
This is what the original image looked like (just turning the top image back 90 degrees clockwise) :
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Pretty obvious now eh?
Is it just me (and my brain) or did you too have trouble perceiving the top image but easily make sense of the bottom one?
7 Favorite Photos
Here are seven of my favorite photos taken in the last week – the end of January into the first few days of February. Over these days the weather in Edmonton has changed from wind chills below -30C to mild sunny days with temperatures of +5. On the cold days I had no choice but to take photos with my Nikon DSLR but on the warm days I was able to break out (and most importantly operate it with my bare hands) my iPhone.
Cold and Busy
China Gate Lion
Blue Shakes
Golden Horizon
Branches
Puddles in the Alley
Light Arc
January Color
With the temperatures warming (-5C) yesterday (2011/1/3) I had a chance to pull out my iPhone and take a few pictures in the downtown area. I enjoy the simplicity of a small mobile phone and the creative tools that can so easily be applied. These colorful images were mostly taken near the Convention (Shaw Conference) Centre in downtown Edmonton.
Traction Abstraction
Sunset Looking East
Viewpoint Sunset
Tracks in the Snow
Flame in the Sky
Silver Winter Nights
We’ve had a couple of days of warmer weather recently (I’m talking about the minus single digits Celsius) so I was able to do some outdoor iPhoneography. I have been doing photography with my Nikon in recent weeks since I can operate it with gloves on my hands but I’ve kind of missed working with the iPhone. The challenge of course is that the iPhone screen (on which the “virtual shutter button” lies) can only be operated with an ungloved finger. I can’t leave my hand exposed for too long but at these temperatures I can pop it in and out of the pocket of my parka just long enough to get a photo.
I’ve been exploring a new (to me) app: CameraBag. It features a number of treatments of photos which reminds me somewhat of what I can do with the Hipstamatic app. The big plus with CameraBag is that treatment can be applied to an image stored in the library and one can easily flip through the different filters after the fact.
One CameraBag treatment I’ve grown to like, particularly for winter nighttime photos is the “Silver” option. This option does offer a number of color tints but I like the blue for these winter shots. Here are three photos from last night (2010 Dec 14), in downtown Edmonton, in a moderately heavy snow, using CameraBag Silver:
Winter Fence and Shadow
Snowy Street
Tree - Trunk
I did adjust the contrast and brightness a bit on this last photo using PSMobile after taking it with CameraBag
Patterns – more iPhoneography Explorations
I continue to explore the Salvador “lens” on the Hipstamatic app. I haven’t yet got it figured out to the point that I can predict what the image will look like but I came up with some interesting images today. All of these have strong symmetry thanks to that Salvador lens.
These images may look like they came from some exotic carpets but they are all from outdoor photos taken a dark grey day. I used the PS Mobile app to increase the color saturation and image contrast.
It’s Hip to be Surreal
The last few days I’ve been exploring a new add-on to the Hipstamatic application for the iPhone. The new “Salvador 84” “lens” pays homage to the surrealistic art of Salvador Dali. I’ve been taking many photos and trying to figure out what exactly this app does so that I can control and use the effects for my creative purposes.
All of these images were taken from a single exposure, just one push of the “shutter”, The application obviously created a 2nd image from the original and superimposes it over the original. There is a degree of rotation between the two images and there does seem to be a delightful element of randomness to the process.
Here are a few of my early explorations of the “Salvador 84” “lens” :
Salv Portrait
City Hall Clock/Bell Tower Reflected
The first 2Â photos shows a vertical “reflection plane” straight down the middle of the image.
With other images things aren’t so simple. In this next image you can see a slight rotation (maybe 20 degrees) and an offset between the original and secondary image.
Street Corner
Pyramids
“Pyramids” looks like it could have been composed of 3 or 4 or 5 images but again it was just a single shot. It is clear in this photo that the app has created a second image which has been shifted diagonally down but with no appear any rotation between the two. This image is the only one of this posting for which I used the DreamCanvas “film” that is packaged with the Salvador 84 lens.
Split Pigeon
“Split Pigeon” was an interesting, surreal surprise in that the crack between the paving blocks seems to go over and split the front bird.
Go - Don't Walk
This final image “Go – Don’t Walk” is simple enough to show the original and duplicate image with a change in size, intensity and a significant rotation between the two – but interesting.
In all of the images in this post I did do a bit of post-Hipstamatic-processing in terms of adjustments to contrast and color saturation
This is a fun add-on to the Hipstamatic portfolio that can certainly yield some creative results – I just want to learn better how to predict and/or control what happens. Next I intend to experiment with taking multiple photos of the same scene to see if there is some random variation in the way the application processes each image.
Photos for the End … of October
I managed to take a few iPhone photos today (October 29th 2010) and have spent the evening putting creative finishing touches on them.
PhotoShop Mobile still seems to be my first go-to app for iPhoto processing although increasingly I am using Iris.Although I haven’t used it today I also often use PhotoFX.
Here are 5 of the photos that I am happy with:
Lear on Landing Approach
Brake Lights
Colors I See
I am thinking that “Colors I See” would make a good painting. I may give it a try in oils or pastels.
Orange Dripping
Morning Porch Light
Photos On a Circular Theme
Here are a five different and interesting photos that I took in September of 2010 on the theme of Circles. These were taken and processed with an iPhone 3Gs – most likely using the Hipstamatic application for capturing the image and the PhotoShop Mobile app for adjusting saturation, contrast, exposure etc.:
Pavings Stones
Sunflower
Targeting the Blues
Fire and Wires
Dandelion Seeds
Black and White Photos (Hipstamatic App)
Here are a few black and white photos I created today (2010 Aug 18) using the Hipstamatic application on an iPhone 3GS. The Hipstamatic app offers a couple of simulated black and white films (BlacKeys B+W and BlacKeys SuperGrain) and that is what I used for these photos:
Wires
Beacon
This “beacon” is simply an indicator light atop a traffic light control box, to indicate when the a pedestrian has pressed the walk button or a bus has remotely requested the light to change.
untitled 1 (Aug 18)
I did a bit of post-processing on these images using Photo shop Mobile – mainly to adjust the exposure and contrast.
Once Upon a Back Stairs
I applied a purple tint to the image above using PS Mobile
Crash Guard
Paint Tracks in the Alley
These paint tracks were a close-up and crop of tire tracks I saw in a back alley after vehicles had obviously driven through a large pool of spilled white paint.
This last “Black and White” photo was a bit of a surprise to me. Like the other in this shoot I used the the Hipstamatic Black and White “films” (this one the BlacKeys B+W). This posted photo has not been altered or enhanced in any way but you can see there is a definite orange color to the barricade and pylons, indicating that this app is not in fact true black and white. It would be easy enough to remove the remaining traces of color using an app like Photo Shop Mobile but I thought it interesting (if not particularly useful) to illustrate this observation:
Orange Barricade (black and white)
My goal for today’s experiment with Black and White was largely to discover if there was any advantage to shooting directly in Black and White with the Hipstamatic App. So far I don’t see any real advantage as i felt I needed to adjust the exposure and contrast after shooting. As lock as I am going to use an app such as PS Mobile or PhotoFX. I may as well remove the color after the fact. Also,with Color FX I have the option of processing with color filters which can alter the relative values of different colors.
Garden Photos (Aug 14)
I had the opportunity yesterday to visit some friends and spend sometime in their garden. In the last year they have created an incredible urban backyard space with a bounty of wonderful flowering plants and some delightfully peaceful spots to sit and relax. Here is a bit of what I saw (and captured using the iPhone Hipstamatic app):
Friday the 13th iPhoneography
While I am anxious to get back to some oil painting and pastel projects, on August 13, 2010Â I got my creative fix again with photography using the iPhone.
Here are my favorites shots of the day:
"Looking in - Looking out"
"No Parking, No Trespassing"
"In the Light on a Dark Afternoon"
"High Tide?"
And this one was my Twitter followers’ favorite:
"Fire Hydrant I"
All of these photos were taken in the downtown Edmonton area on Friday August 13, 2010 using the camera with an iPhone 3Gs. Applications used were Hipstamatic and Photo Shop Mobile
Moody Afternoon Skies
Summer in Edmonton and the afternoons can be pretty stormy. It is pretty typical for huge cumulonimbus clouds to built up and quite likely bring rain and thunder storms. The clouds can make for some dramatic skies – some parts clear blue with some dark clouds and some brilliant white fluff where lit up by the afternoon sun. Add to these conditions some moody effect from an iphone camera app and the results can be quite interesting (if at time a bit ominous and scary):
"Muster Point"
"Storefront with Spilling-over Sunlight"
"Apparel"
These images were captured with an iPhone 3GS using the Hipstamatic camera app and post processed a bit with the Photo Shop Mobile app
iPhoneography – 3 Flowers
Here are three flowers that I’ve walked by in the last couple of days and I was sure glad to have my little camera available to capture these beauties:
This end result of this photo made me pretty impressed with the quality of the iPhone camera. One can not select the exposure on this camera so the flower in the initial photo looked like one big blob of white. However, I ended up being very pleased that there was still a lot of detail captured. I used the Photo Shop Mobile app on the iPhone to repeatedly reduce the exposure. While the back ground faded to black, a lot of subtle shading became visible in the flower. I added a purple tint to the flower to arrive at this final image.
Today I ran across two sunflowers – one a brilliant traditional yellow and the other with some more interesting colors:
The blue fence boards behind the flower certainly create a nice background to this unusually colored flower. Both of these sunflower photos were taken with the Hipstamatic application and this one in particular was processed with the PS Mobile app to enhance the colors beyond what was actually captured ( but closer to the colors I perceived.
Today’s (2010/6/9) iPhoneography – black and white
Getting away from my supersaturated colors today, here are three black and white photos taken and processed with my iPhone:
One Seed Head
Clover
Dandelion Seeds
Iphoneography of the Day (2010 Aug 5)
My iPhone photo of the day: “Flower vs Background”
Image captured with iPhone 3GS camera and processed with the Photo Shop Mobile app. The “Sharpen” function was used to bring the rather bland background to the exciting explosion of color seen here.
I regularly post more iPhone photos on my Twitter feed – follow @RandallTT
Abstract iPhonegraphy
Sample of Randall’s abstract photographs taken with an iPhone and then manipulated by various apps:
iPhoneography Inspired Abstract Paintings (Exploration – part 3)
Here is the third piece that I worked through to explore the process of using my abstracted iPhone images as references for pastel paintings.
original iPhone photograph
iPhone photo after processing
final abstract pastel painting
I considered this exploration, proof of concept to be successful enough that I am going to proceed to develop a series based on this theme and approach. I do hope and expect that my pastel technique will improve as I do more of these pieces.
I see now that the pastel pieces in these posts look considerably more washed out than they are in real life. I would say they are in fact closer to the enhanced photos than they are to the original photos.
I would certainly appreciate any feedback you have on these pieces
iPhoneography Inspired Abstract Paintings (Exploration – part 2)
Here is another example, where I take an iPhone photo, abstract it and then use it as the basis for an abstract pastel painting:
original photograph (seagulls sitting on a roof)
photo after enhancing/abstracting
final pastel painting (30 x 30 cm)
iPhoneography Inspired Abstract Paintings (Exploration – part 1)
Today (2010 August 2) I am starting a new series of abstract pastel paintings based on images I created with my iPhone. By taking photos of some very simple subjects and then using the apps (particularly Photo Shop Mobile) to adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation as well as some cropping and rotating I have come up with some images that really appealed to me. I wanted to take these larger but I just don’t think the resolution of the camera would allow for an enlargement of reasonable quality. I therefore have begun to explore the idea of using the photos as starting points for some colorful abstract paintings and I’m thinking pastels will give me the color saturation most similar to what appeals to me in the processed photos.
I’m sharing here my first experiments. I have taken three photos and created little (30 by 30 cm, or 1 foot square) works on hardboard prepared with gesso and Golden Acrylic Ground for Pastels. My vision is to produce the series at a size of 60 by 60 cm and maybe even try a few at double those dimensions.
For each of these works I will show the original unprocessed iPhone photo, then the processed photo and finally the pastel work. My intent is not to make an exact copy of the photo image but to capture the essence of it
original iPhone photograph
photo after processing with iPhone apps
final pastel painting (30 x 30 cm)
As it has been a while since I’ve worked with pastels I am not feeling as comfortable with the media as I would like to be but I’m sure I will improve as I work on this series.
Randall Talbot - Artist 