Day #72 – A Photo A Day 2013
Gosh, being sneaky with your iPhone to take pictures is HARD sometimes. Today’s shot is a perfect example of this. I found it to be one of the most difficult shots that I have edited lately.
Adorable Boy Riding on BART
This little guy was SO ADORABLE and he kept playing peek-a-boo with me… everything in me wanted to set up the shot and leave his Mom out of the picture – I felt like her white shirt was going to be really distracting in the frame. Also, I didn’t want the boy to lose his un-inhibited playfulness by putting the phone up to take a photo.
After I got on the plane at SFO I started looking at all of the shots that I got – the boy’s mom had on that annoying white shirt, and it was ruining this shot!!! What should have been a simple edit took a better part of the flight to do because I just could not seem to find a way to diminish that shirt enough to my liking.
A ton of masking and layering went on. I wanted to age the photo but not make him get lost in the edit. I’m only half liking the results but I could not think of anything further to rescue this photo. In the end I suppose what matters is that I captured a sweet and cute moment and treasure that rather than obsess over what I feel is lacking in the composition of the photo that captured it.
Day #71 – A Photo A Day 2013
Trains are a never ending source of fascination to me and in particular I really like the BART Powell St. Station in San Francisco. Part of this may be a connection to it since my very first BART ride destination after leaving SFO was to that particular station.
I also really like the lines of that particular stop – so many textures and since the tunnel is so long at that point it gives me a chance to get really nice lines in the (excessive amounts of) photos that take of the station.
Warped Speed – at the Powell St. BART Station
This was taken as I was waiting for BART to take me to SFO last weekend. I really wanted to capture the motion of the train as it was coming in for a stop and I felt inspired to not only run it through Tangled FX but also played around with it in ElastiCam, made by Lucky Clan. I only warped the windows of the train to give it a sense of faster motion while maintaining the integrity of the lines of the rest of the train.
ElastiCam takes a bit of getting used to, not that it’s difficult to use – quite the opposite actually, but fine-tuning just how sensitive you do or do not want the effect to be to the touch of your finger takes a bit of time. At first I found myself over-applying effects, but once I got used to gently dragging and adjusting the strength of the effect, I found it to be extremely fun and satisfying to watch the transformation to my photo.
Day #49 – A Photo A Day 2013
Visiting another city was on my list of things to do today, mainly because I wanted to go to a fabric sale at Joann Fabrics, and there isn’t one here in San Francisco.
We have a couple of fabric stores here, Britex which is AWEEESOME but expensive and another warehouse-style place on Howard St., the name of which escapes me at the moment.
The warehouse place always has a clearance section and decent prices, but I wanted specifically to catch the 50% off of clearance prices at Joann.
So, I hopped on BART and away I went!
Neither sewing nor fabric nor Joann’s has anything to do with today’s pic other than all of those things were my motivation for going out in the first place, but I digress.
Balboa Park BART Station
This trip marks the first time that I have used BART for anything other than going to and from the airport and I thought that it was about time that I get outside of the city for a little exploration. (even if it was just a fabric store!)
I hopped on the first train to come along, which happened to be going to Daily City. What I learned along the way (and I figured this is what would happen) is that I had to get off at Balboa Park to catch another train that would go all the way to Colma. As it turns out, I had a little bit of a wait at Balboa and it ended up being the same amount of time that I would have spent waiting for the right train at the Powell St. Station. Oh well! That gave me time to play with my iPhone and take some pics!
This pic is of the station looking upward and at the sky, layered in the Blender app with an accidental shot that took of the platform in front of me… if you look in the upper right-hand corner of the pic, you’ll see a cigarette butt there!
After layering this pic in Photo FX, Iris and ScratchCam, the sky looks really stormy, but it was actually quite sunny out that day. I love how you can totally change the mood of a pic right there on your iPhone!
It was a fun little trip – I have now dubbed Colma “Dead Town” because in my walk from the BART station to the shopping complex where the fabric store is, I saw no less than 4 graveyards, and big ones at that. I SO need to go back there just to take pictures of gravestones!!!