Tag: Photo

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30 Days of Creativity: Day 3

The Clearest Way into the Universe

It’s Day Three of my 30 Days of Creativity project, and this creation combines a photo from my John Muir Trail trip and thoughtful quote from John Muir himself. This is part of a weekly meme I’ve started at SoCalHiker.net called Muir Mondays.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. – John Muir

I took this photo in late July 2010, lying on my back on a picnic table in the backpacker’s campground in Yosemite Valley, the day before we began our three-week thru-hike on the John Muir Trail (JMT). The trees swayed in the wind, and reached so tall they seemed to yearn for the stars. It was a perfect setting for pondering the trail ahead.

I tweaked the photo first in SnapSeed, but ended up bringing it into Photoshop to add the text and a translucent gradient (to aid text readability).

In my experience, nature is the perfect muse. What inspires you? Let me know in the comments.

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30 Days of Creativity: Day 2

Bouquet + Macro Exploration

For Day Two of the 30 Days of Creativity project, I submit another photo project. My wife brought home a beautiful arrangement of flowers from a work event. The flowers are beautiful on their own, but when you look closer, there is another world of beauty revealed, rich with textures and colors.

I created this entirely on my iPhone 4S, using an Olloclip to capture the macro images, then compositing with the handy Moldiv collage editor for iOS.

If you browse my Flickr photostream my love of macros becomes obvious.

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Create Amazing Infographics About Your iPhone Photos

Infographics have become a popular way to convey a lot of information in a concise form. Rich with data, they leverage graphics to provide context to the numbers. Now a clever Swedish company called Dear Future Astronaut has released a $0.99 iPhone app that will analyze your photos and produce a beautiful infographic analysis.

I recently purged about 1,000 photos from my iPhone, but Photo Stats didn’t mind. It still created the following, beautiful infographic that analyzed the 266 photos still on my iPhone.

 

Photo Stats will show you where, when and how you took your photos, with location, time of day, your “most productive” days and various photo properties like portrait vs. landscape, ISO setting and photo app used.

The $0.99 price is reasonable, although they say it’s a promotion only good for the first week. After that, it goes up to a whopping $1.99 (still a deal, in my book). Go get Photo Stats, and share a link to your Photo Stats in the comments below.

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Day 19 in Paris: Love, Locked

Love, Locked

If you look closely, you’ll find our lock on this bridge near Notre Dame.

This is a wonderfully odd real-world meme. The story I heard from a guy in our cooking glass (who has lived here in Paris for the past nine years) was that the guy who started this was despondant over unrequited love. He “locked his love” to the bridge, the jumped off and drowned in the Seine.

Not sure if that’s true, but since then, lovers have taken the idea to an extreme. And area sales of padlocks and Sharpie pens has never been better.

Oh, if you look closely, you’ll see a padlock for Joan and I, too. And that alone was reason enough for me to chose this as my Day 189 photo for Project 365.

For more on our trip to Paris, check out Joan’s travel blog and our Memolane timeline.

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Day 18 in Paris: Refuge des Fondus

Joan at Refuge des Fondus

One of the meals we wanted to enjoy was fondue. A quick search on Yelp turned up what sounded like a fun place in Montmartre called Refuge des Fondus. It’s small with a fixed menu. You get an apertif, an entree, your choice of cheese or beef fondue, wine (served in baby bottles to avoid the per glass tax), and if you choose, desert afterwards.

There are a row of tables along each wall of the narrow restaurant, with no room to scoot to the bench. So the waiter helps the ladies step on a chair and hop OVER the table.

When you’re finished, you can sign your name or leave a message on the wall, the ceiling, or anywhere you can find a scrap of available space. That’s what you see behind the beautiful Joan in this photo, #188 from Project 365.

C’est magnifique! And a lot of fun, too.

For more about our trip to Paris, be sure to check out Joan’s travel blog and our Memolane story.

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Day 17 in Paris: Old Bones in the Catacombs

On our 17th day in Paris, we visited the Catacombs. There’s a formal name for this which eludes me, because this is actually a cemetery of sorts.

It was created in the late 1700’s when overcrowding at the graveyards which traditionally surrounded each church became a serious health problem. The catacombs were a network of underground tunnels originally created as builders mined for stone for more buildings.

Each of the graveyards was transferred to a specific section of the catacombs and marked, so if you know where your loved ones were originally buried, you’d be able to find their new subterranean home, too. There are 6-7 millions Parisians in the catacombs.

It’s rather creepy. I’m glad we went, for the historical value, but for the most part, this photo shows you pretty much all you’ll see.

Oh, and you’re looking at my photo for Day 187 of Project 365.

For more on our trip to Paris, read Joan’s travel blog and check out our Memolane story.