Life as seen through my iPhone camera.
When I created the tetraptych on day 129 I actually made more than one since I had more window pictures than I knew what to do with. So here is the second one. A couple of these pictures are similar to photos I've posted in AOMi before since they're from the same series. I take a lot of shots of the same thing and only end up using a few here and there.
Like last time I created this in Diptic with pictures I took while sitting in the passenger seat using the iPhone camera and Gorillacam.
I tend to ping around between Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa. So during drives to and around them I try to take as many pictures as I can out the car window. Here's a tetraptych created in Diptic of pictures I took while sitting in the passenger seat using the iPhone camera and Gorillacam.
Today's piece started as another that I took of a bedroom wall while we were in Toronto. The light was coming through the blinds and making interesting lines on the wall but after fiddling with the results for a while I just wasn't coming up with much I liked. While playing around kind of aimlessly, though, I ran it through the Pointillize filter in PhotoWizard set to the largest size and liked the rows of coloured dots it gave me. I saved that and imported it into Snapseed to see what else I could do with it and ended up using a Grunge filter on it. I liked it but still wasn't quite satisfied, so then imported it into (you guessed it) Corel's Paint It! Now where I used the Oil filter on it.
I like the result so much that I'd totally hang it on my wall if it were a real painting!
Today's piece started as a photograph of the bedroom wall in the apartment. I was going for something artsy and minimalist that included the shine on the paint from the overhead light. It wasn't as visually interesting as it could have been on its own, though, so I decided to play around with it.
First I imported it into NPtR and used a brush on it on the Erase setting, then took a screenshot of it with the original picture still showing through. I imported the screenshot into Corel's Paint It! Now and used the Illustration filter on it, then saved that. Finally I imported it into PhotoWizard and used the Thermal Camera effect on it on the Orange Flood setting.
I can't even express how much I love PhotoWizard. I especially love the masking ability and have plans to post some pictures soon that make good use of it! It's a very strong editing and special effects app and the full version is so, so worth the money.
The joys of trying to fit a large bed into a small bedroom. You sacrifice either usable space or aesthetics. And never win.
I did like the layers it gave this photo I took in our Toronto bedroom, though. The Ikea bedframe against the utilitarian blinds and the building across the alley. It kind of epitomizes how I feel about apartment living in Toronto; trying to bring individuality and softness on a budget to a space that has seen so many hundreds before us, scoured and repainted each time someone new comes along. The cramped feeling of all this humanity crowded into buildings that are crowded against each other.
I took the shot with Gorillacam and straightened and cropped it in Snapseed, finishing it off with a Drama filter of course. I then imported it into Corel's Paint It! Now and used the Oil filter and saved the result. Then I combined the Snapseed and Corel's Paint It! Now pieces in Blendcam using Darkness Priority. I really liked how it preserved the detail in the bricks while still giving it some of the paint details.
So we're in Toronto for a few days. I am a bit of a wimp about traveling with Essie, especially now that she's at that funny age where she understands a lot but isn't convinced that 'no' really means no when it's about something she reeeeeally wants to do. For the most part, though, she's lovely and game and excited about seeing and doing new things. We're here to help pack up the apartment we used to live in and there's not a whole lot for her to do here, so last night when we left to go do some shopping she ran excitedly ahead of us down the hallway and I whipped out my iPhone to get a few shots with Gorillacam.
I was pleased with the pictures and picked the one with the most movement. I opened up PhotoWizard and used the Straighten tool, the Sharpen filter and then decided to use a Light Leak effect on it just because I liked the way it looked. The end result gives me kind of a 'The Shining' vibe.
Today's piece is sort of a companion piece to Day Ninety-Four. After taking yesterday's picture I turned and took some shots of the light coming through the blinds against the wall. I cropped this one down to include just the emergency pull cord in PhotoWizard (we were staying in a senior's residence for the night) and used the Thermal Camera effect on the Orange Flood setting. I feel like it really did give it some panic.
I apologize! This is the first entry that I've been late submitting to AOMi and there was really no excuse since I had it ready to go. I had dental surgery today, however, and did not count on the drugs they gave me causing me to lose most of the day to a pretty heavy fog. It's past midnight now and I feel much more alert, so here is the 2nd's entry. Let's all pretend it's yesterday, shall we? *wink wink*
I took this picture with Gorillacam in the room we stayed in while we were in Ottawa recently. I cropped it down from a larger shot with Snapseed because I liked the decrease/increase feel of the perspective of the blinds and the sky outside. It felt appropriate, somehow, for the drawing close of the year.
Today's photo was also taken on our recent trip up to Ottawa. The sun was setting dramatically on the driver's side of the car but on the passenger side the sky was this gentle pinkish-blue and I loved it. I took some shots with Gorillacam then straightened and cropped the photo I liked best in Snapseed to get rid of the side of the road. I really wanted to showcase the gorgeous colours of the sky while leaving a bit of reference at the bottom.
My grandpa always called this kind of sky 'sky blue pink'. Pretty perfect name for it!
I decided to post the original picture of the doors from yesterday's entry. I'd considered doing so in the first place but went with the heavily edited one instead. Since then a couple of people have asked me about the doors and what they really look like so here they are! All I did was crop and add a Drama filter in Snapseed to bring out some of the detail.
Door 12 is actually the entrance to a little restaurant and I'm not sure what door 10 1/2 led to. I loved the colours and the weathered paint, plus the mysterious arrow-shaped metal things nailed to door 12.
Today's picture was taken on our drive home from Ottawa after the fondue party and overnight stay. We had to stop in Smiths Falls and when we parked in front of these interesting doors I couldn't resist snapping a few shots with Gorillacam.
Shadow of Shadow A Day posted a link to an app I hadn't yet discovered. I was thrilled to find that it's exactly the kind of photo editing app I've been looking for and downloaded the full version immediately. It's called PhotoWizard and has a ton of effects and editing capabilities all packaged into an attractive, easy-to-use app that is worth far more than the small amount they charge for it. I used the Pop Art effect on these doors to make them even more interesting, and was happy that this particular filter retained the red and green paint.
Today's picture was taken today on a snowy drive to Ottawa to visit family for a fondue feast. I was taking lots of shots from the car just to see if I got anything interesting and this one turned out pretty well. I'm really not all about the self portraits, I swear!
I took this one with Gorillacam and used Snapseed's Drama filter on it afterward.
Today's picture was also taken at my sister's place on Christmas day. This is my daughter, the youngest of the cousins, and my sister's oldest son, the eldest of the cousins, sharing a moment at the kitchen island.
I took this shot using Gorillacam and imported it into Snapseed so I could use the Drama filter on it. I love how they look like they're deep in discussion!
Merry Christmas Eve! I love Christmas Eve almost more than Christmas Day. It was always a special night at our house when I was a kid with special snacks and family time and the anticipation of the next day making everything even more exciting.
It's not a very white Christmas around here this year. You can see the barest dusting of snow on the lawns in today's picture but that's all we've got thus far. It's not breaking my heart, personally, but I know it just doesn't feel like Christmas to a lot of people without heaps of snow. Anyhow; with the beautiful tree and my family it feels like Christmas to me no matter what.
Today's picture was taken with Gorillacam and edited in Snapseed with the Drama filter. Old standbys that give me the results I like.
P.S. Make sure you look at this one at full size by clicking on it. The glass globe looks neat and the details are lost in the smaller size.
OK, I promise this won't become all colour isolation all the time. I couldn't resist one more for now, though, because the brightness of this flower makes me so happy. It's one from a series I took using Gorillacam and I used Dash Of Color to showcase just the flower.
I do thoroughly enjoy Dash Of Color but I'm finding that it crashes unexpectedly if I zoom in too much (where too much equals enough to have lots of control over where the colour is going.) It is a free app and if I'm careful not to zoom in quite so much it works fine but I would like to not have to worry about that. I'm going to see if I can find another comparable app for free but wouldn't mind paying a little to have the functionality without the bugginess.
I took a lot of pictures of Essie in her costume on Halloween this year. Most of them turned out pretty well; in focus and showing off her cute little colourful witch costume. I kept coming back to one in particular, though, because I loved the movement and energy of it. It had lots of motion blur and really seemed to capture the way Essie operates.
Since I've been enjoying Dash Of Colour so much I decided to play with this photo and isolate the most important element of it; Essie. I seriously love how it turned out and I think it makes the picture exactly what it should be.
I took this photo of Mongkut after Essie decided to place this piece of cord along him. It was funny because instead of jumping up or trying to play with it he just sat there as still as possible as if he were afraid to displace it. So I grabbed my camera, fired up Gorillacam and took a bunch of photos.
Since the cord was such a bright, striking orange I played with the photo in Dash of Color and coloured just the cord, leaving the rest of the photo black and white. I loved how it turned out!
Dash of Color is a neat app that you can use to create photos with isolated spots of colour. To do so you have the option to paint with a colour pen or a gray pen, using the colour one to restore the original colour to the photo then using the gray one to touch up any spots you've accidentally coloured. It takes a little effort but it's nice to have so much control, plus the undo button remembers every edit instead of allowing you just one. For a free download it's fantastic!
This picture was taken when the weather was warmer. It's been kind of unseasonably warm the last few days here in Eastern Ontario but still; I do miss the summer. This is a kind of cabbage-y ornamental plant of my mother's after a little rain and I love the greens and purples of it.
I took the picture using Gorillacam. I played around with some filters in other apps but in the end was very happy with it as it was.
I took this picture in October but never quite got around to using it then. My mom's raspberry bushes provided tons of berries right up until just a few weeks ago and well into October Essie and I were going into the backyard daily where she'd eat them by the handful. My handful. I'd pick them like this and she'd stick her face into my hand and hoover them up like a greedy bear.
I think I took this one when she was finally tired of eating berries one day and left me with these so I snapped a few shots with Gorillacam, then cropped this one in Snapseed. I didn't use any other filters on it because I didn't want to mess with the brightness and richness of the red.
As always click to see the picture at full size.
Today's art doesn't exactly showcase the plant as a whole but it was the product of some experimentation I've been doing with various programs. I know I took the shot with Gorillacam trying to capture the curly, withered nature of the leaves since the cold weather hit. It wasn't quite what I'd hoped so I used the Oil filter in Corel's Paint It! Now to see what happened. It was interesting but it lost the definition of the leaves. I decided to combine the original with the filtered shot in Blendcam and was very happy with the sketchy, airy quality the filtered shot gave the original while still keeping the leafy look I'd wanted in the first place.
