The Bare Bones of iPhone Photography

Hey there, Digital Diva here. One of my favorite artists is Georgia O'Keeffe. I've done some iPhone photos of abstracted flowers as homage to her paintings where I use Gooey Faces to "melt" the blossoms into pure shapes.

So when I came across this cow skull nailed to a post at Hui Hoolana during a recent photo seminar, it was all over.

Here's the straight photo; busy background, tilted awkwardly, not too interesting. Yet.
Straightened the skull in Photogene. Blurred out the background in Photoforge. Double exposed with abstract color pattern in DXP.
Sepia in Tiffen Cool FX, Double expose in DXP with background of abstracted lines.
Sketchmee? Tiffen Cool FX black and white.
Painted background to rust color and added border in EdgePix (sadly no longer available.)
Lightened, toned and bordered in VintageScene app.
And my favorite done in Vintage Scene with a little embossing of the skull itself done in TouchUp.

HDR On The Prairie at Ballyneal

Digital Diva here with a travelogue piece on Ballyneal Golf Club. On a recent trip to Colorado, two hours outside of Denver on a magic golf course in the middle of nowhere (which is really SOMEWHERE special) the Dude and I played golf with 4 other dear photographer friends. And of course, documented the experience with our phones. And the Dude went full on HDR.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography has a specific look to it - sometimes I like it; sometimes I think it looks over the top. Still, I like when we can make the iPhone and other cameras "see" as much as our eyes do.

Dewitt used mostly True HDR app to put two exposures together. He tapped the phone in the shadows to open up detail and then tapped the phone on a highlight to expose properly for it. The resultant two images worked not at all until combined in True HDR.

(And news flash, I hear the new OS for iPHone is due out soon - which will have HDR capability built into the OS. Woo - hoo. Can't wait to try it.)








And if you want to see some really beautiful images by professional photographers Dick Durrance and Sue Drinker, check out the Ballyneal site.

Vintage Seen

Digital Diva here. One of my new favorite apps is called Vintage Scene. It allows for all kinds of grungifying to antique your iPhone photo art. This first shot is of Smileys Bar in Bolinas CA. It lends itself perfectly to this aging technique.


This was a relatively crappy shot of a tree with sun starring through it; was all blocked up and I opened the shadows and decreased the contrast in Photoforge, creating a crappy low contrast shot. Ah, but all is not lost. I knew when I took it that it would make a great antique looking image.

My handsome, talented son, Brian Kavanaugh Jones as he photographed Lake Tahoe, and I photographed him. No, this is not 1954, it was a couple of weeks ago.
Here in Lake Tahoe, a group of us have a picnic on the beach every Tuesday night. This forces us to go to the beach, because no matter where you live, it's easy to forget to partake of the great places we live unless of course we have company. After sunset, we spotted the M.S. Dixie paddlewheeler boat cruising across the lake. A perfect subject for grunging - it seems like it is from another century.

Finally, the Ahwahnee Hotel's dining room in Yosemite is as gorgeous and timeless today as it was when it opened in 1927.

Getting an Eyeful of the Eiffel

Digital Diva here. The Eiffel Tower is the most iconic symbol of Paris. Yet on the day we visited it, we had a relatively uninteresting sky and flat noontime light. What to do? Whip out the iPhone of course and get app-happy. The first image is essentially boring - a sleeper of a record shot.
A little faux HDR with Photoforge helped jazz it up.
With Tiffen Cool FX app, I turned the shot into black and white, sepia toned. Frosted edging was added with ArtCamera app. I like this image.
Camera Bag app has my favorite faux infrared - somehow looks painted too in the sky.
My favorite image was made taking the HDR frame and adding PicGrunger app to make a old postcard effect.

Somewhere Under A Rainbow

Digital Diva here with a look at one of my favorite photo phenoms. Looking out the window in Hawaii, I saw this rainbow. I shot the iPhone photo right through the window streaked with rain. (Hey, no need get wet!)


Here is the HDR version done with TrueHDR app. You can faintly see some diffusion from the wet window, which actually makes it look more painterly.


Next I tried a faux infrared with Tiffen IR filter in PhotoFX. Believe it or not, we have rainbows like this on Moloka`i - it is called the land of the night rainbows. They happen during the full moon when it shines on the veils of upland rain. Sometimes they are pastel colors; more often I've seen the in varying shades of white. It is always awe inspiring to see the night rainbow.



Fnally, I combined the faux IR with the color shot and blended them in DXP, the double exposure app for this watercolor effect.

Things Are Getting Sketchy with My iPhone

Digital Diva here! Interesting images when you combine a sketch (done in ArtCAmera app) with the original photograph. I used DXP with various blend modes for final photos.

The highest sea cliffs in the world seen from Mo`omomi Beach are in Moloka`i. Can you tell it was dawn when I took the original? No? Then can someone tell me why I got up at 430 am?


Flowers at midday, thank heaven.


Aspen trees photo was taken last spring - worked just now.

Best Straight iPhone Shot Ever!

Digital Diva here with the best straight iPhone shot ever. No photoshop, no cool iPhone apps. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Except maybe supernatural or divine creation having nothing to do with the photographer. The Dude gave a coffee cup to his Diva for Christmas this year that says "Dog Mom" on it and has a ring of paw prints on its inner circumference. I zapped a cup of coffee in the microwave and pulled it out to find this perfect paw print in bubbles on top. When I hollered to the Digital Dude to come look, he gasped and said "Did you get a picture of it?" I did. Proving that the Best Camera truly is the one you have with you. Ahhhhhh, the paws that refreshes.

Through The Looking Glass

Digital Diva here with some questions to ponder. What is our personal creative vision? What themes continually drive our photographic expression? Who are we as artists?

Having just finished a fabulous photo seminar here on Molokai called "Rekindling The Creative Spirit" co-taught by Dewitt Jones, Rikki Cooke, Theresa Airey, and Jonathan Kingston, the Diva may be getting closer to an answer for herself. This annual event fills participants and instructors with inspiration and new techniques/ideas for going further in our photos. We come away rejuvenated; our photography gains new life.

Still, when we examine the themes that continually show up in our image-making, even as we explore new creative options, we may discover clues to an artistic identity; our photo vision if you will.

I gave a slide show for the class combining images from 15 years ago (film, what a concept), digital images from the last year and a half, and more recent iPhone images. All these photo media had distinct commonalities. My unifying themes were and are abstraction, simplicity, and other realities. With "other realities" taking top billing. I've always been captivated by the underlying realities that a camera can see even when we can't. Slow shutter speeds, camera movement, multiple exposure continue to dominate how I "see".

Can you look back and find some of your themes? What attracts you again and again photographically? As Rikki Cooke says, "What's turning your head?"

Here are a couple of iPhone photo art images that turned my head. Or were in my head. Or both.

Enter The Matrix

Digital Diva here. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the Ezimba iPhone app. It has more manipulations and filtrations than I've been able to explore. But I'm workin' on it.

My latest foray into the wilds of Ezimba took me to a section called Enter The Matrix. I entered and got happily lost layering matrix effects on various images. Piet Mondrian, a Dutch 20th century painter, is one of my favorite artists and these pieces echo his abstractions to me. This first image was a tree with falling snow.

Next, I matrixed a tropical sunset photo from the coconut grove beach here on Moloka`i.



This is the most abstract (and my favorite, since it feels the most like Mondrian.) The original photo was a blur or drive-by of fall foliage in American River Canyon between Placerville and Lake Tahoe, CA.

This is a matrixed fall aspen tree driveby or blur. I also layered it with an aspen leaf - double exposed in DXP app.

This laua`e fern image is from our garden here in Hawai`i. I photographed it on the sepia setting of my camera, then increased the contrast (a la Brett Weston) and sharpened it. Lastly, I brought it into the iPhone and it went through the matrix.
Sunrise at Moomomi Beach.

And the last image is a double exposure of a matrixed photo of Sierra wildflowers and a photo of butterflies - created with DXP app.

Somethin' Fishy Going On With My iPhone

Digital Diva here. Living on a tropical island means being surrounded by water filled with all manner of colorful fish inspires me to accentuate their color and form with my iPhone (and no, I did not take my phone underwater.) I did app the heck out of my fish photos with Vihgo, DXP, Photogene, Edgepix, Shockmypic, and probably more iPhone apps that I can't recall just now. My iPhone has become a virtual aquarium!

Livin' in Those Little Latitudes

Digital Diva here and life is heating up in the tropics as I keep playing on my iPhone with Toonpaint, and combining images with the originals in DXP. Here's three more images.

Something fishy is going on here. Oh yeah, the blend mode is difference!

Hula dancing at the seashore on Moloka`i.


Anthurium and ferns.

Tooning Up With Color in Toonpaint

Hi all. Digital Diva back as promised with color added to iPhone Toonpaint images. My favorite method is to use DXP, a double exposure app, and combine the original color image with the Toonpaint black and white. I like using DXP because it has multiple blend modes, which can change the color added from vibrant like the sunflower below...

to just a hint of color as in this pale pink freesia...

to a more half and half blend as in this torch ginger...

to a totally "unreal" but wonderful color image like this inverted vase and flowers using the Difference blend mode in DXP. Just experiment and find out what blend modes work best with with images for you.