Photography Archives - Page 21 of 21

Category: Photography

Every picture is a memory

On May 17, 2013

I scrolled through my iPhone camera roll of thousands of crappy pictures and found a slew of memories I had forgotten. Most of them are random, repetitious and nonsensical when you look at them again months or years later. Then I found a set of pictures with a common thread in them.

Taro Gomi’s Daily Doodle Calendar was a birthday gift from my friend. I worked on it daily until August 2011. That was when we got really busy with work, the wedding and the new flat. On 17 May 2012, I was still grumbling about the many defects about the place, how we were kept awake by bright as day lightning flashes at night, the howling wind and worrying about leaking doors and windows. But I digress. Needless to say, the doodle that day was bleah~

But I was happy too. After endless tarrying with non-contactable contractors, we finally got 90% of our storage up that week. Yes the toilet cabinet was still missing doors but the relief of finally having storage brushes all that away!

Looking back at the previous posts and photos of every leaf of hand-drawn doodle captured into my phone brings back a linear trail of memories that is rather heartwarming. An event for every single day of the month, captured in the same silly format, crystalising a particular thought, a point in my own personal history. Together, it all becomes such a great gift that I still enjoy looking at two years later, even if they were memories largely captured in crappy pictures! :P

To think I would find a copy of this calendar in a garage sale far away from home on this make believe weekend road trip that Daily Prompt has cooked up! Wahahahahaha~

Anyway, here’s a small selection of doodles from my own copy of the calendar:

Jan 24: That’s my mom in the wheelchair. She fractured her knee.
Feb 19: I watched 127 hours.
Apr 19: Parliament is dissolved today.
Apr 24: Random boxing potato heads. Maybe I was watching Hajime no Ippo.
Apr 29: My girlfriend and I were holidaying in Australia when it happened.
May 08: The election results were only announced at 3am.

Daily Prompt: Memories for Sale

Donna is relaxed because I don’t have my phone in her face :O

By weliveinaflat

On May 16, 2013

In Photography

Instead I was pottering in my kitchen snapping macro-views of things with, I would like to say childlike wonder, except that from what I read that phrase is usually used to describe other people and never yourself. But I did get rather excited and shuffled around looking for more things in the kitchen to take macro pictures of.

But let’s start from the beginning shall we?

So I just started to pick up iPhoneography skills. This week’s topic was “macro”, a format that I was not familiar with. I failed in my first attempt. My dog ate my homework subject. Right. Some things are better done indoors, and with more research.

I knew macro pictures had to be taken with macro lenses so I was uncertain how I was to do that with a camera phone. Is there any specific macro photo app that I should download? Research ensued in which I was educated by a bunch of harebrained people to shoot through a magnifying glass, a water droplet (at the detriment of the phone!), etc, etc. Of course there are macro lens for iPhones on the market if you are so inclined. I’m not.

So anyway, let’s give those harebrained suggestions a shot. Why not, I’m as harebrained as the rest of them anyway. It seemed more prudent to place the drop of water on the lens at the front of the phone rather than the lens on the back of the phone. The front is all plastic covering over the lens, so I thought there would be less worry about the water seeping in there. So what conspired was, the phone was resting stably on a box in front of the window (so there is some indirect light), and the tiny toothpick drop of water sitting on the plastic covering the lens. The rest was just a matter of holding the object to be photographed over the drop of water and positioning it to get as sharp an image on the screen as possible before tapping the phone.

Note: Please understand that Apple does not provide warranty for water damage and iPhones are definitely not waterproof.

And since I was at the same time having an interesting time looking at Meg Greene’s multiple exposures, I thought to try that out. Searched and downloaded the first app Google threw up at me.

I narrowed down my selection to a set of four objects, each with one close-up and one macro snap of it. For each double exposure, I layered a close-up view of an object with the macro shot of another object. Made it into a four-tile collage and this is what I ended up with.

Can you match each close-up to its corresponding macro image?

Here are the answers:

Dust, scratches, detail and fibre. I was quite amazed by the degree of detail in the macro captures.

Then the light grew bad, so I stopped.

Hello sleepy.

iPhoneography Challenge: Macro
Apps used: Camera+, Instablend, Moldive

By the way, this is the exact size of an image saved from Instablend, so tiny!

I couldn’t find the settings to increase the resolution. The advertising was also very obtrusive and irritating. So I won’t really recommend it. Let me know if you have an awesome double or multiple exposure app to share, k?

By the way, you guys should check out echo/sight if you are interested in double exposures. Their work is amazing.
– http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1068932801/new-york-london
– http://instagram.com/echosight

References
– http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/07/tips-better-iphone-macro-photos/
– http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/07/take-an-iphone-photo-remotely-using-the-earbuds/

What the flowers saw

By weliveinaflat

On May 10, 2013

In Photography

Look.

Out the window.
A canopy of trees.

Look out the window.
An encroaching urban jungle.

Soon to engulf,
Our mish-mash foliage —
Raintrees, Angsana trees.
They tangle together.

No more.

Not here.

These trees that stand in plain sight today.
Beneath layers of foliage, lichens, parasitic ferns,
before you see the tree they cover,
the craggy bark these plants cling onto.

But in the distance,
Look.

In the heart of the urban jungle,
Conservatories, man have built.

Gardens by the Bay.
Trees from far off lands stand there.
Proud individuals in their cooled air domes.

There,
the flowers be.
Studied closely, bloom by bloom
they hang. There.

And this is what the flowers saw.

Apologies for the bit of bad pseudo-poetry.

We took my mom to see the tulip display at the Gardens by the Bay for Mother’s Day. Although my mother loves her container garden, she perhaps found it hard to appreciate flowers and plants from other continents that she is not familiar with. She was happiest when she could identify plants similar to those that she is used to. And she had greater interest in the fruit bushes found at the sidelines than the tulips and other strange flowering shrubs that would not survive our climate outside of the conservatory. But I think she had a good time.

I discovered the iPhoneography challenge sponsored by gracienobiya, Lens and Pens by Sally and watchingthephotoreels the other day via completelydisappear. All the photos on this blog are taken with my iPhone. The photos above using the iPhone camera app and the Gorillacam app. I’m not used to editing much on my iPhone though, so that would be something interesting to start exploring in future posts.

When you are planning for a country, you can’t afford to see the individual tree. I sometimes wonder what sort of forest do our country leaders envision in their heads. Just a curious interest.

Themes: Nature, From above
iPhoneography Challenge: Nature

The coast is clear, says Inspector Grass

By weliveinaflat

On April 15, 2013

In Photography

During our doggy patrol, Donna reports that the the coast is clear, failing to note the Indian man right behind her!

Did I mention that my dog will look anywhere but to the front when I have my camera phone pointing at her? I’ve never been a great photographer and I overcompensate with quantity in hopes of striking quality. = = !

Today I got lucky and got a snap of her looking directly at the camera phone as she surveyed her surroundings from left to right, lip-licking tongue and all. I love the weird expression so I made it into the blog background :P. The green makes the blog look fresher doesn’t it? ;)

More high density living coming our way

By weliveinaflat

On April 13, 2013

In Photography

The trees lining the open-air carpark behind our block have been labelled for their imminent removal. The plot of land was planned to be re-developed to support three new blocks of flats (a hell of a lot more people) and a multi-storey carpark.

We will miss this carpark. Its presence has after all ensured that we get an unobstructable view all the way to the city for the past year. Unfortunately, once the three 32-storey blocks are up, our wide view of the surroundings will be sliced up. :(

Other then that, I will also miss the chance to bump into Donna’s mother, Dior, and her owner infrequently, since they seem to like doing laps around the carpark.

Otherwise, the carpark is a place we pass through to get from one place to another. I was never that interested to get to know each and every tree even if we do walk Donna here occasionally for her loo breaks. But since it will be gone soon, we decided to spend more time just trying to see if there is something special in a rather ordinary carpark.

While my impressions of the carpark will be the overall spread of towering angsana tree branches and foliage overhead, Donna’s recollection of this place will likely be the sights and smells underfoot.

She will never spy the unexplainable junk left in the crock of tree branches, as surely as she will never sniff the fungus climbing up the tree trunks over her head.

Nor the parasitic ferns with their delicate fronds highlighted by the sunlight, until they fall to the ground.

Soon to be gone, to be replaced by new landscaped greenery and young saplings decorating the three new apartment blocks and attached multi-storey carpark that will slowly arise from the construction site in five years time.