Day #50 – A Photo A Day 2013
As of late, Chris and I have used a great deal of our free time (free time? well, perhaps not, but we’re making time) to play Borderlands 2, an obsession that I think is not going to go away anytime soon.
I never did play the first one all the way through, simply because I didn’t have regular access to the 360 before we got married and we weren’t living in the same city. I kinda wish that I had, but after paying #2 I have to say that this is much better than the first one. (and I really liked that one!)
I think that my own obsession over Borderlands 2 is beginning to affect my creativity, because everywhere I look I’m imagining how things would look like if they were places in the game and I’m altering my photos to have a hint of that look.
For example, here’s one that I edited today. I took this pic at 3rd and Market streets yesterday as I was walking home from the BART station:
3rd and Market St.
I cartoon-ized it in an app called Manga Camera, then ran it through Iris, Colormania, Scratch Cam and then in Iris one more time to get the grunge effect that I wanted. I do wish that I could have gotten a more cell-shaded effect, but I have yet to find an app that will help me achieve that.
Nonetheless, I’m basically happy with the results, and I think that I’ve found a new obsession with Manga Camera!
Day #38 – A Photo A Day 2013
More fun was had with the Pro HDR app this afternoon. I was on Market Street running some errands and the late afternoon sun was blindingly bright and casting the most interesting shadows from the mass of people walking toward me.
Market Street was even more crowded than usual due to the droves of people freshly out of a day of convention going over at Moscone Center, which made it difficult at times to move upstream (since I happened to be going in the opposite direction of what seemed to be EVERY person who had been at the optics convention today) but this proved to be the PERFECT conditions for capturing people in motion without them noticing me taking their pictures. Stealth for the win.
I am really having such fun with movement while using this Pro HDR app. I end up with some very interesting double exposures and in this case, some of the people toward the top of this picture look like ghosts.
Shadows on Market Street
Look for a couple more pics from this day! I have a couple of unusual edits in mind.
Day #8 – A Photo A Day 2013
HDR is an aspect of photography that has intrigued me for quite some time now, and I am finally beginning to dabble in it a bit with my SLR.
Although I haven’t had the results that I have hoped for, I continue to experiment and I am not going to give up until I get the results that I am striving to achieve! Perhaps I need to read more on the subject.
Just a few days ago, I came across an app for my iPhone that claims to do the HDR work for you, so I decided to give it a go based on a plethora of good reviews.
Here is the result of my first experiment:
HDR Experiment
The app is Pro HDR and it is really easy to use. Set your phone on a stable surface or attach to a tripod and it does the bulk of the work – first it analyzes the light/shadow in the room, and then it takes two pictures to layer. That process takes around 20-30 seconds – that’s just an estimate as I didn’t actually count how long it took to finish.
Once the processing has finished, you then have the opportunity to adjust various levels of the picture: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Warmth and Tint. Beyond that, there are also crop, frame, text and filter options to add to your photo.
It’s easy to use, and I think that it’s an app that I will be apt to use very often which means that I am going to have to invest in a Joby tripod! 😉
NextGEN Gallery Plugin Test
Well, here is a test of the NextGEN Gallery plugin – wheee!
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