snowpocalypse now

On Sunday I was enjoying the sunshine and the almost 80F degree weather. Bit different today.

suzanne

iPhone photography

I'm pleasantly surprised at the quality of pictures I can get out of the iPhone, both the older model and the new 3GS. It takes a bit of care and thought when making the shots to get decent results and all the usual things about composition and light certainly play a part, too. You do need to play to the strengths of the camera, composing with simple elements, large in the frame and realise you are composing for such a small scene helps. This isn't the best camera in the world to shoot detailed landscapes, but if you treat it well you can get good results. Get close, simplify, simplify.

I use a couple of apps on the phone to process the images. There has been a lot of hype around 'best camera' but I wouldn't honestly recommend it. The filters it provides are all very heavy-handed and don't provide enough finesse to get decent results. At least I haven't been able to do anything other than over saturate or blow out details with it. Fun for about 5 minutes but not worth the money. It has turned into a facebook upload client for me (it doesn't do flickr easily). Certainly has potential but needs work to be really useful.

My favourite two photo processing apps on the iPhone are Mill Colour (free!) and TiltShiftGen (99c). I use Mill Colour for the initial grading of the photos, then TiltShiftGen to provide controllable blur and vignetting. That isn't really the main goal of that application (it lets you do the somewhat cheesy fake miniaturization technique that mimics the cheesy real miniaturization effect people do with tilt shift lenses - fun once.) However, it does provide very flexible blur and vignette controls and is useful if you want to give a krappy kamera feel to your iphone pictures. That's been something I've been experimenting with, with this camera, and I like the results. It is well suited to the simple, bold compositional style the camera tends to require anyway. Playing to the strengths again. I use Mill Colour first to get the general feel right, then finish with TiltShiftGen.

Here's the other camera apps I have on my phone. Pano is good for doing stitched, multiple image shots. Haven't used that much. The various more detailed editors seem good but I don't find much need or use for Photoshop on my phone, other than maybe cropping. Snapture is a great camera app, providing things like touch anywhere to take, zooming, and multiple shot modes. I use that to capture all the images.

100x100

Shot some swimming last weekend. Actually did a bit of swimming too! Was good to get back in the pool

the end of times

well, the end of 2009, anyway.

Farolito

One of the most illuminating features of Santa Fe, at Christmas, are the farolitos or lumminaries that are set up all over the town. Many of the buildings have electric versions of them but on Christmas Eve, the real paper bag and candle versions are set up all over the streets. Amanda and I enjoyed a very chilly evening stroll around the streets, lit by the little glowing lanterns.

Santa Fe

We decided to spend Christmas in Santa Fe, NM. I'd never been there before and Christmas seemed like a good time to go! We had a few inches of snow, just enough to make everything pretty but not too much to spoil walking around. The food was great, the town is lovely, in a slightly faked to stay old-fashioned way and the food was fantastic.

All the pictures here were taken with my iPhone. I'm continually surprised with what I can get out of that with some attention to the format and a couple of cheap applications to do a bit of post processing on the phone. If anyone is interested I can write a bit about what those are and how I'm using them, too. I have more images I took on a better camera, still languishing on the memory card. Meanwhile, I've managed to arrange prints of some of these iPhone pictures, all before even leaving Santa Fe.

Merry Christmas!

back to the beginning

My guitar lessons continue. I'm practicing every day, going to lessons once a week. Generally trying to immerse myself in the whole thing and building up calluses in the right places. I'm making progress, one buzzing fret at a time. I'm finding a hidden musical world revealing itself to me as I learn each new thing.

I frequently have times, particularly in my lessons, when it feels like the teacher is talking a foreign language. An alien, foreign language, where I don't even know what the words sound like, never mind what they mean. He'll demonstrate something and make an offhand remark about 'this compared to this' and to my ear they sound the same. Well, different, but I don't even understand how to articulate the difference. He'll talk about concepts and I'll be struggling to understand the words he's using - I might have heard them before but the meaning hasn't quite percolated into my brain yet. The last time I remember feeling this lost would be about 20 years ago, first year classes at University. It's been a while! Every now and then I can feel the bemused expression on my face as I grope towards understanding what he's trying to explain to me, while I wrestle with even getting the words he's using lined up in my head. It's fun! I record the lessons and occasionally when I listen back to them something new clicks in to place and I feel like I might be getting closer to having a vague idea of what was actually being discussed.

It did strike me that I probably do this to people when explaining photography, too. Concepts and ideas that I've had years to get straight in my head just seem so obvious and act as a starting point for the conversation. When really, going back to first principles is often quite a long journey back, to get up to the point you might like to discuss. I've seen that bemused look before, from the other side!

back from big bend