This is a straight picture of the Mouse Couple, two funny little rusty metal sculptures, One of them has a bow-tie, which you can see in  the first panel of the quilt. I liked the way they seemed to be relating to each other with several different moods. The picture file for the matrix is large, so it might take a while to load. However, it's cut way down for this blog from the original humongous file.

PowerCam in Action

This is a matrix of photos taken with the PowerCam app, which shows the filter or special effect in action as you take the picture. This is quite helpful in composing the shot, which I generally do by squinting at the screen until all I can see is the value pattern. Since many filters affect the color values, they can influence the balance  and compositional choices. Each filter seemed to call for a slightly different approach to framing the shot.

The app is easy to understand and navigate, and has a nice selection of effects. Most are color based, but a few are distortion of various kinds. You can zoom as you compose, turn the flash on or off, and touch focus, but there were no controls for the effects. The filters also work while in video mode, which is very exciting.

This is a great start, well designed, and I look forward to the upgrades. On my wish list would be higher resolution, and some kind of controls for the effects.

The Mouse Couple at Home uses many, but not all of the filters, so it's a sort of sampler. Of course, I also wanted to create real art, so although I tried out all the filters, I chose images that worked well together compositionally and psychologically. I did use two of the more colorful effects twice, for balance, and flow, and because I'm a color freak. The finished quilt is very large, and will make a dandy poster. At least I think it's finished ... I may shuffle a few of them around more a bit more,  for fine tuning. It was composited on my desktop Photoshop because of the much larger real estate.

I usually take multiple photos of whatever catches my eye, as I am not always so steady, and often the smallest change of angle or tilt can dramatically alter the composition. When I am lucky enough to have a photo shoot that goes for several days, I also tend to revisit some especially fruitful situations. The light changes or I think of a different approach or I see something new. This can produce hundreds of pictures. In the case of the trip to the river, there were over 500 photos to contend with.

To organize them all and start to sort out the winners, I begin by putting them all in a single file. Then I divide them into as many sub-files as necessary to make sense of them, the files named as descriptively as possible . The river series produced twelve categories, including such groups as "the Thin Red LIne", "Stems and Bowls", and "Stack o' Crystal Balls"

There are always a few that defy categorization, or that are one-of-a-kind. Here are a few from the "Cool Things" category.

If it looks like it will be a clear morning, I like to get up before dawn on the Equinox, and walk to the far end of Lincoln Park where there is a good view down East Capitol Street. Just like at Stonehenge, the sun rises directly down the middle.  This Atumnal Equinox, however, I didn't quite make it that far, but I still got my shot by standing in the middle of East Capitol looking towards the park, with the US Capitol behind me. The sun obligingly made a nice showy halo coming through the trees. Then I had to dash, because it was already rush hour, and traffic waits for no one.

This one started as a straight photograph of the same river sunrise as the last post, taken with the iPhone.

Then there was a lot of photoshop.

Also a lot of fun.

A very pleasant trip to the river on a beautiful weekend, a magnificent sunrise, and my trusty iPhone, and now I've got a whole new series to contend with. Here's the first of them to get any attention.

Camera: iPhone 4S
Apps: Anticrop, Touchup
Photoshop

I've been working with the huge Beach Glass series, trying to narrow it down a bit, and bring a few to completion. This image is less abstract than most. It required much fussing, but I'm quite happy with the results, and the prints are looking good.

Camera iPhone 4S
Apps: Retouch, Anti-crop, Photogene
Photoshop

A new business card based on a picture from the "Copper Dreams" series.

Much fussing with Photoshop.

Click here for more Copper Dreams