The networked veins of a dried leaf
Tag: iphoneography
This is a shot of the neighbourhood childrens’ playground that I took last week. On any other day, the picture will be clear and sharp, the buildings in the background would not look as faded simply because we are generally a hot, sunny island with very clear visibility. And yes, there might be a child or two about the slide, ladder or climbing wall.
We have been beset by smoke haze from hot spot fires in Sumatra, Indonesia from last week and the PSI index reached as high as 401 (air quality is described as hazardous when it climbs above 300). Over the weekend, things seemed to have improved, and air quality seemed to have stayed more or less moderate so that’s good.
On another day, I noticed the sun reflecting off the windows of a building.
I turned around searching for the sun and there it was.
I was telling Mr P how without the haze shrouding the sun, the picture above would have been impossible for me to shoot. And then he shared with me his own photo that he took coming back from work at 3a.m. The picture was shot from the carpark downstairs.
Mr P doesn’t take pictures very often, but the moon, red from the haze is something neither of us has seen before.
While I may whine and gripe about the haze like everyone else, I also have to concur with Wiley who was wise to say,
Not sure how to pay it forward in this case :P Mostly, we are just thankful Donna and I have the option to hole up in our tiny air-conditioned study when necessary. Although I expect the electricity bills will climb.
Dogs lick themselves when they are relaxing, bored or stressed it seems.
Note:
Haze is a yearly occurrence in Singapore normally in the months August-September. We’ve been lucky to escape the worse of it in the last few years and one barely notices it if one is stuck at work in the office all day. This year’s haze is so unexpected and it’s not until I experienced how severe it can be in our own backyard so to speak that one starts to empathise with those who have to live with it daily.
Haze health tips for pet owners, read this previous post.
This post is a companion post to Weekly Phoneography: Population, in capturing our already very urbanised neighbourhood at a point where:
- we have started to see physical changes in the landscape, growth of buildings around 3 times the height of existing flats
- the interplay of the elements of nature in an urbanised environment – air, trees, sun, moon
I love early mornings when the sun casts shadows on the glowing concrete.
See the dog…
… and know the humans are never far away.
It’s kind of hard to relegate Donna to the background when I’m supposed to be holding onto the leash, so we’re depending on some multiple-exposure app goodness here! Hah!
I guess the Japanese doll graphic is copyrighted to the tissue box manufacturer whose product I took a photo of. It was handy since I was busy blowing my nose off from the influenza. :P
Another one, this time comprising photos of the dog at different distances away from me in the living room. Can you spot the one in the background?
iPhoneography Challenge (Abstraction)
It seems we can choose from the list of themes provided this week. I was keen to further explore multiple exposures, so I chose to do Abstraction. Although I’m not sure if this really fits. :/ Heh~
Apps used: Pudding Camera, Blendcam, Gorillacam, Snapseed
Today, the iPhone is a mysterious man that offers to sharpen your sense of sight and dull everything else, your taste, your hearing, your ability to touch and to smell. Right away, wouldn’t your world start to seem one dimensional?
What is food without scent and taste to colour it?
But hang on a minute, with sharpened sight, you start to notice details that you may have decided not to notice when you were dealing with all your senses at once.
You see light and shadow, pattern and movement. Little things that once escaped notice because they were insignificant, or in odd corners. Or because they helped form the part of the whole impression of a place, rather than demand your central attention. These little details enrich without calling attention to themselves.
But no, life is incomplete without all the senses at play. And even as you revel in your newly achieved clarity, your dulled senses start to return as the hypnotic iPhone runs out of battery. Slowly, you smell the Peking Duck and hear the buzz of chatter in the background. Sweet relief.
iPhoneography Monday
App: Gorillacam, Snapseed
Black and white photos can be so emotive even with its limited palette. It shows up the interplay of light and the dark in spaces, makes more pronounced the profile of people and things, removes the clutter that is colour and creates a moment of stillness that makes me anticipate the future that follows.
Pictures taken at myVillage, a little mall that we were visiting for porridge and some light dim sum.
