Lana`i Hawai`i - A Little Slice of Heaven

Digital Diva here. The Dude and I visited the beautiful island of Lana`i just over a week ago. (See Nov. 25 blog post for great iPhone pix video from the Dude of the fabulous Hotel Lana`i.) And as always, we were both making art in our spare moments. Right outside the hotel, looking toward Lana`i City, I shot this iPhone photo. The pathway lined with pineapple plants points to town with the Cooke Island pine trees towering above.

This photo is a record shot - the foreground is dark, shadows blocked up, just not terribly interesting. I can attest that it looked much prettier to my eye.



Luckily, iPhone apps came to the rescue. I used iFlashready three times to open the shadows.


I then ran the HDR filter in Photoforge to recover highlight detail and further open the shadows. I added Vibrance to saturate the image.


I then tried the infrared filter in the Tiffen app Photo FX. (I used Tiffen filters with my film cameras back in the old days - like an old friend showing new tricks.

Next I used PicMix to layer the infrared version on top of the super saturated color version and painted in a little color at about 25% opacity. I like this look - used to do it in Photoshop with my big girl digital camera images.

I was having such a good time, I went back to my saturate, HDR image and oversharpened it for a photorealist painting effect

I then turned it black and white in Photoforge - looks like an engraving with the oversharpening.


I kept fooling around and used Shockmypic on the saturated HDR image for a whole different look.


In Cinema Fx, I used the Egyptian Gold filter on the saturated image.


Last, I used the Color Comic filter found in CinemaFX app for a completely different take on the scene.

And then it was time for breakfast at the Canoes restaurant, where the owner, Fergie, is an iPhone aficionado of the highest order. He posts his daily specials to Twitter and Facebook right from his iPhone every am. We had a blast sharing apps, photos, and iPhone stories. This helped fuel our app - etite. So we ordered and ate the heavenly banana macadamia nut pancakes while we shared.