Monday, August 30, 2010

was that Mary Poppins?

About a week ago the weather seemed to change.  Cloudy, cool, definitely feels like summer is over.
Thanks to The Nino we had a glorious winter.  Sunny, warm, dry, almost no rain and no snow.  The spring made up for it though, cool and damp 'till June.  Now in August it sure feels like a change in the weather.

Somehow dark, grainy, blurred images seem appropriate.  Hipstamatic processed in Tiffen Photo fx.







Sunday, August 29, 2010

Hudson River Lighthouse

Sleepy Hollow NY

OK.  I'll admit it.  Iris is a fun App.  This is an image taken about a year ago which I ran through Iris.  I applied several filters and a "couple a two-tree" layers, didn't keep track, probably couldn't recreate it.

I added the "Instant Film" border in another App...Camera+.
I added the type with a watermark App called Impression, a free App for the iPhone.  I believe the iPad version will have the ability to print black as well as white.


Saturday, August 28, 2010

Iris "Mask over Base"

A couple days ago John asked about painting out texture in a blended image.  There is an action called "Mask over Base" which seems to do that.  The painted section allows the bottom or base layer to show through.  Each layer needs to be the same dimension before combining so there might be an extra step involved, and the texture would need to be the top layer I think but it looks like it would work for someone as computer crafty as he is.

Friday, August 27, 2010

brush fire

Traveling east along the river I could see that parts of south central Washington were on fire.  A large brush fire filled the skies with smoke.  Helicopters and a C-130? filled their water tanks in the Columbia.

Standing next to Stonehenge looking north at sunset


A 5 image pano stitched in phone with AutoStitch.  After cropping this image wound up being almost 14MP.  It was very windy.


Stonehenge on The Columbia River

On one of my regular journeys to The Palouse, this time following The Columbia River through Oregon,  I stopped at the Stonehenge Memorial built by Sam Hill.  Sam's is an interesting story, drivers in the Northwest owe him a debt of gratitude.  He built Maryhill (castle now a museum) perhaps in an unsuccessful attempt to entice his wife Mary to leave Minneapolis.  He also built a replica of Stonehenge as a War Memorial after WW1.  It sits on a high bluff overlooking the Columbia.


Maryhill Museum





Customer Appriciation Days

If there were just one day there would have been room for spell check.  Oh well.  Always great to appriciate your customers.


Say.  You don't suppose that's what the kids are calling it now.

Overcast afternoon







Roll on Mighty Columbia

Spent a couple hours in the Columbia Gorge today, met these very lovely people.  They were somewhat amused by my iPhone...they were impressed with the results though.



("...just type your e-mail address there, press the blue button and a copy will show up in your in box.")

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Iris Photo Suite

If you didn't grab a copy of Iris while it was free (huh??), grab it now at 99 cents.  I'm anxious for the iPad version, whenever they develop that.
They have added additional capabilities, one shown below.  I knew someone would do this but kinda thought it would be Tiffin.

I recently read an article by a software developer blasting Apps as being all priced way too low.  His premise was that we wouldn't see any "Good" apps 'till pricing got up to where they could make some real money.  Apps like Iris stuff that premise where the sun don't shine.

Hipstamatic Image

Random Texture available for free on the internet



"Ding" Fries are done!



There are a lot of controls built into Iris such as order of layers (it makes a difference), blurring, intensity, multiple layers etc.  Incredible.


Monday, August 23, 2010

need to pay more attention

to when the shutter actually releases.

Mt Rainier

Spent Saturday in Mt. Rainier N.P.  Low clouds which quickly turned to fog upon gaining elevation.  It was also very crowded.  The entrance gates had "Express" lanes...no credit cards.  Fortunately for me most visitors seem to enjoy the road to Paradise Lodge.  There they fight for parking, play in the snow, eat lunch and go home.  I get off that road quickly and usually find solitude although sometimes it takes a bit of hiking.

Girlies are back

from the visit with their other Grandparents.  Yippee







Mondays









Thursday, August 19, 2010

Tiffen

This is an iPhone, Hipstamatic image.  I additionally processed it with a Tiffen App.  Tiffen (the filter people) have 2 iPhone Apps.  One of them, Ultrafx is essentially a $5.00 iPhone version of their Dfx software an Aperture or Photoshop copy of which costs $300.00.  Fortunately for me (old eyes and large hands) they've also released an iPad version of this App which is so much easier to use.

For this image I used their other App, Coolfx.  I added 3 layers to the original Hipstamatic image: a layer emulating 8mm movie film grain, a Glow or Halo layer and a Burnt Copper coloring layer.  Not a particularly award winning image either before or after but I like it.

motivation and film vs digital

Stopped in to a coffee shop the other day and met Andreas Goldemann.  As I was reviewing images on my iPad Andreas, a motivational speaker from Germany was writing his second book on his iPad.  When he saw that I had a film camera as well as my iPhone he mentioned that film is preferable to digital as it captures a person's entire aura while digital just gets an image.

Didn't know that.

Yet another reason I still use so much film.







Saturday, August 14, 2010

Plastic Bullet

Plastic Bullet is an App made by Red Giant Software, a company with many titles and large enough to actually have a sales department and a customer service department.  First released a couple of months ago it unfortunately didn't save full resolution images.  I, along with many other iPhoneographers e-mailed them and now version 1.1 saves full resolution.  Originally reviewed in blogs as a replacement for Hipstamatic (it isn't) it is fun to use though.

Color Hipstamatic image from a couple of days ago re processed with Plastic Bullet.