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Saturday 28 February 2015

Day 59 of 365 Day Challenge

Year of the Sheep...Goat...Ram?


Day 58 of 365 Day Challenge

Went out for supper at our closest mall and had to try and find a picture so I decided to take pictures of the shop windows and see what I could do with it. So here is the result as well as the original pictures:

Apps: Snapseed to straighten, crop and tune-up, Photoshop Touch to cut out the model and create a mask, Diana to blend the two pictures, Stackables to add some texture, iColorama for further texturing with my own textures and to blend more, Repix to add effects and posterise, Facetune to smooth out the face and enhance some tones and Retouch to remove a line. Phew I think that was all of them.







Wednesday 25 February 2015

Day 56 of 365 Day Challenge

I didn't feel like taking photos today. In fact, I didn't even feel like going out but I had a hair appointment. The only thing that gave me some excitement was the fact that Olloclip has come out with a telephoto lens for the iphone 6 and I was hoping to pop into the Apple Store first and see if they had it. So I went out a good two hours before my appointment to see if I could get one. Well, they didn't have one and when I phoned my usual Olloclip supplier they didn't have one either so now I'm really grumpy.

I decide to go to Soho so that I can get my daily photo out of the way and this is an easy option. So I go to a quirky hat shop which I know will make my life simple and next minute I'm engrossed in taking photos and thoroughly enjoying myself. I peer down a little lane off Hollywood Road in an area I thought I knew well and see this interesting little general courtyard. I go down the steps and oh my, it's a treasure  trove. I NOW have my daily shot. There's a lovely little French restaurant there too and I treat myself to a dessert and tea. In the meantime I am inspired to create and take some of my old pictures and make a collage. After this I explored more and going passed the doorway to a building I hear a wonderful tune coming from the doorman who is playing a harmonica. I stand for a moment and tap my feet in tune. Ah yes it's been a good day!

My daily picture - Yes, there is hope!

Here is the collage I did at the French cafe:




Tuesday 24 February 2015

Day 55 of 365 Day Challenge

To walk from Central Hong Hong to my home you have to go up 389 steps and the only reason I know the number is because my poor husband has to do it every day and he's the one who told me. Whereas I might sometimes get the bus or a taxi, neither of these are convenient at the time he comes home so it's just easier to walk. So I took a picture of the last set of steps home which always seem the worse and tried to convey a picture of what it feels like.

I used the app Hyperdroste to get the repetition, Repix to jazz it up a bit, iColorama to make the border and Snapseed for cropping and tuning.


Monday 23 February 2015

Day 54 of 365 Day Challenge

I'm back in Hong Kong and found it quite difficult finding a photo to take today after the excitement of Vietnam. I looked and looked and tried to compose a shot when I saw something interesting but it wasn't happening. However, sometimes a shot just jumps out and grabs the camera and what I mean by this is that I was walking along and instinctly took a shot without really thinking about the composition and when I got home I thought, wow, I actually like all the elements in this picture without having thought about it when I took the shot. Does your brain start to do it for you with practise? An interesting thought.

Apps: Camera+, Snapseed, Artomation and iColorama


Sunday 22 February 2015

Day 53 of 365 Day Challenge

It's my last day in Vietnam and my iPhone is just teeming with interesting shots of life in Hanoi. I have decided to choose the theme of buildings today. The French architecture mixed with the Vietnamese way of life makes for great photography and I have chosen a shot which I think best reflects this mixture. The buildings are very narrow due to the high cost in the old days of frontage. But these buildings have massive depth which is shown in one of the other buildings I have included.

Apps used: Snapseed, Superimpose, Waterlogue and iColorama






Saturday 21 February 2015

Day 52 of 365 Day Challenge

Today's theme for Hanoi is motorcycles because there are hundreds of them and many have entire families on them. Bangkok when I visited it was the same. Intersections are just a free-for-all and everybody hoots incessantly to warn of their approach. If you look at today's photo you will see that the bike on the left has a family of FIVE on it! I have included another two pictures of the same intersection.






Day 51 of 365 Day Challenge

With all the New Year festivities in the streets here in Hanoi, the children are particularly cute in their Sunday best so today I have chosen a picture of a little girl and to make up the theme of children I have added a couple more.





Friday 20 February 2015

Day 50 of 365 Day Challenge

As I am now in Hanoi in Vietnam, it's Happy LUNAR New Year. What a fascinating place and I've had enormous fun taking loads of interesting pictures. It was difficult to chose which one to use today but in the end decided to go with one that is in keeping with the festivities. Families are out and about in their Sunday best and many children in traditional dress. One disadvantage of being here at this time of the year is that all the shops are closed but many of the shutters are up and you can see families all sitting around long tables celebrating the occasion. All the many temples around the city are humming with folk.

Apps used: Handy Photo and Stackables


Here are two more pictures that I have had time to manipulate, both with Snapseed and Stackables. They were taken with Hipstamatic.




Wednesday 18 February 2015

Day 49 of 365 Day Challenge

Happy Chinese New Year from Hong Kong and I know it's tomorrow but then I'm in Vietnam. So it had to be yet another picture from our apartment buildings display as I have learnt from our other trips that getting a picture on the hoof is not easy when you have other things on your mind.

So I went down to the foyer this morning and this is my main picture although I have included a couple more.
Some others taken today and and on other days.



Tuesday 17 February 2015

Day 48 of 365 Day Challenge

Yet another Chinese New Year Decoration taken at the PMQ in Hong Kong (Policemen's Married Quarters converted into art/design studios and shops).  The photo is of a giant Goat from hanging gold foil bits.

The shot was taken on an iPhone 6 using the Hipstamatic App (Helga Viking + Dreamcanvas). No editing was applied.

Here is an ordinary shot which shows you the scale and gives you a better understanding of how it is put together.


Monday 16 February 2015

Day 47 of 365 Day Challenge

I've been busy indoors all day today and when 7pm came along I wondered what I was going to do about my daily picture. I looked out of the window and thought, you stupid twit, the whole of the foyer in my apartment block is full of Chinese New Year decorations and the other two buildings close by have outdoor decorations too. So this is today's picture taken with Hipstamatic on the iPhone 6.


Hong Kong Equestrian Masters 2015

I was very lucky to be invited as a guest to the HK Equestrian Masters on Saturday night and got some fab pictures of the entertainment and horses.

This next picture was manipulated using Snapseed, iColorama and Artomation:

There were some amazing sculptures on display.  The next two photographs are taken of sculptures by the Chinese artist, Xiong Lijun. The pictures were taken using Hipstamatic on the iPhone 6:



The next picture is a photography of a sculpture by the artist, Ji Yong Ho, who makes his sculptures out of pieces of car tire:
Finally, the French street artist, CEET, spray painted a horse at the show. These pictures are near the start and then near the finish:




Sunday 15 February 2015

Day 46 of 365 Day Challenge

Chinese Year is on Thursday and there are displays and decorations everywhere here in Hong Kong. There were lots over Christmas but I think they do this even bigger. I will be posting a lot of pictures on Thursday of all the decorations but today's picture was taken in the IFC Mall using Hipstamatic with a slight alteration in Retouch.

Saturday 14 February 2015

Thursday 12 February 2015

Day 43 of 365 Day Challenge

I had a great day of photography today capturing both street scenes and nature. Walking back home through the park I came across this lovely scene of the ladies of a family and have chosen it as today's picture. At the same time I have discovered an app which uses a picture or photograph to generate music. So below the picture is a video of the pictures 'music'. The app is called Tunetrace.




Wednesday 11 February 2015

Day 42 of 365 Day Challenge

I went through my local mall again today and took a couple of pictures of the flowers which are part of the Chinese New Year displays. They are actually artificial flowers so quite bright and I thought that taking them with the Hipstamatic app might tone them down. However they were still a bit bright so I took one of the pictures into Repix to posterise it slightly then opened it in Stackables and chose a sepia texture formula. I then took it into iColorama and blended this with a coloured texture that I had using the hard light blend mode. I also changed the brightness and contrast slightly in the latter app. 

Here is the end result and below that I have included the original picture, the sepia done in Stackables and one of my own coloured textures.




Tuesday 10 February 2015

Day 41 of 365 Day Challenge

Although I have done a lot of photo manipulation over the past 5 years, I never really concentrated on actual photography and I feel this is an area I could significantly improve on, so I joined Nina de Vries of Snap! Photography on a group walk in Hong Kong Park to improve my photography with a DSLR.

This meant that I didn't get many iPhone pictures but I did manage to take a couple here and there. While we were in the aviary, a Bali Starling was posing on the railings and I got some lovely shots of him with my iPhone as I was able to get close. Here is one. I cropped it in Snapseed and then cleaned up some of the background in Photoshop Touch. Finally, I used the Paint option in iColorama to give it a painterly look:



Monday 9 February 2015

Day 40 of 365 Day Challenge

I was in town today and I have been meaning for a while to photograph my local hardware store. It took me ages to find a place to get the usual odds and ends that I need because big shops or department stores just don't keep this sort of thing. There's not much you can't get here!

The photo was taken using Hipstamatic (Helga Viking and Dreamcanvas) with one of my texture formulas applied from the Stackables app. I also had to straighten the roof slightly in Snapseed. Yes, it's on quite a steep slope!



Sunday 8 February 2015

Day 39 of 365 Day Challenge

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”