Latest Works - On My Travels

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Hong Kong

Day 248 of 365 Day Challenge

Hong Kong from the Peak.

Apps: Hipstamatic, iResize, Marksta

Day 247 of 365 Day Challenge

I've enjoyed my trip to Singapore and Australia but it's nice to be home!

I love the way the shops in Hong Kong put so much effort into their window decorations. Just love this bird with the reflections from the buildings around it adding to the strips of the display.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Snapseed, IResize, Marksta

Day 114 of 365 Day Challenge

Have you ever walked out of a cafe and forgotten to pay? Well, it happened to me today and it is always something you dread.

I went to this wonderful little French cafe called, Cafe Lavande, which is towards the top of the Mid-Levels escalator at 4A Prince's Terrace. The cakes look absolutely delicious but I settled for a lovely cup of blossoming Chinese flower tea. The flower is in a ball and it slowly opens, releasing it's fragance and becomes this pretty submerged flower.

Anyhow, I had ordered the tea at the counter and because I had paid up front all day I had it in my head later on that I had paid. I sat for ages taking pictures of my cup of tea and finally left thinking that I had paid. I looked around to say goodbye to the young gentleman who had served me but he was not at the counter and the other young man was engrossed in the corner with something so I just walked out. I went a couple of steps down to a fab takeaway shop where I occasionally buy half a rotisserie chicken for supper. As I got outside the young gentleman from the cafe was standing outside waiting for me and I smiled and said hello and then he asked me if I had paid! I blinked a couple of times in shock, I think, and then it slowly dawned on me that in fact I had not. I apologised profusely and he was very understanding.

So I just want to thank him for the dignified and gracious way in which he approached me as such an event is mortifying! I do so hope I have the courage to visit the cafe again because it really is a lovely little haven to have a drink and I often pass it on my way home. It is well worth a visit!

So today is a picture of the beautiful little flower that emerges from your ball of tea. Only the border is in iColorama otherwise the entire picture was edited in Snapseed, an app which is even better now with the new features. The photo was taken with VividHDR.

This second picture was taken with Camera+and also edited in Snapseed

 

This final picture was taken in Hipstamatic with no editing

Day 112 of 365 Day Challenge

I went on a fabulous boat trip from Sai Kung today with my 'Golden Girls'. A lovely day leisurely talking, laughing, eating and swimming. You could not wish for more.

This next picture shows the boat coming back to the harbour.  Manipulated in Snapseed and PaintCan, it pretty much sums up the day - relaxing, good company.

Day 111 of 365 Day Challenge

I went with a friend to the Asian Society today chiefly to see the historical buildings which make up part of the site. These buildings are the Old Victoria Barracks which is a former explosives magazine. Within the complex there are four old military buildings built in the mid-nineteenth century for the production and storage of ammunition and explosives.

So today's photo is an old lantern perched in one of the buildings manipulated in iColorama, Superimpose and Stackables.

Day 105 of 365 Day Challenge

I met a friend today to plan a trip into Shenzhen, China, next week and at the same time decided to go to Sham Shui Po to see if I could find some sewing bits and pieces for a hat I'm making and also to see if they had any hats I liked anyway. I've got a small head and find it very frustrating getting a hat.

Anyhow, Sham Shui Po is fascinating. There are three main roads of shops or street stalls that just sell buttons or beads or lace or fabric or leather bag making supplies not to mention electronic stuff. The first time you go it's really quite overwhelming and it's easy to get lost and go backwards and forwards along the same road because all the shops seem to look the same. Everytime I go into a shop and come out again I don't seem to remember from which way I entered and end up going back down the road I have just come up. I usually have a good sense of direction but here it just goes straight out of the window. However, this is my fourth visit and I think I am at last getting a feel for where everything is. It's important that if you find a shop you like you take a card and write down what you saw there otherwise you may never find it again or remember why you took the card!

Up to now it is amazing with all the supplies that I often come back empty handed but now I have started to get more methodical. Language is sometimes a problem so you have to be prepared to go into a shop and search it from top to bottom. I come back from a visit here absolutely knackered.

It's better for sewing accessories than fabric itself unless you want to buy a lot. There are tons of shops with swatches but you have to order the fabric and you need to purchase quite a lot of metres so it doesn't serve my purpose. There are some street stalls with fabrics but none as nice as the fabrics I can get home in Surrey and London.

So today's picture is a picture of some of the rolls of sewing tape you can buy and then a picture of a typical ribbon and lace shop. Taken with Hipstamatic (Helga Viking + Kodot Grizzed) on the iPhone 6

Day 104 of 365 Day Challenge

I had to go into Central Hong Kong today to do some shopping and decided to pop into my favourite little French restaurant, Les Fils à Maman, for a light lunch. It's down a small allleyway off Hollywood road near the PMQ and for me it's a lovely little rest stop. It's in a square and today there were some Chinese men playing a game with stick cards. Further on is some cheeky graffitti on the wall and this is today's picture.

Taken with Hipstamatic (Helga Viking + Kodot XGrizzled) with a slight tune up in Snapseed.

Day 101 of 365 Day Challenge

It's been cold the last couple of days in Hong Kong and going out on a rainy day today it was not going to be easy to get a picture on the hoof.

In Wan Chai, one of my favourite buildings is The Pawn, one of the few old colonial buildings left. As the name implies it once was a Chinese pawn shop and is now an upmarket shop and restaurant. The restaurant is pretty pricey but we had a great brunch there one Sunday. So that is today's picture. I have included the process.

The picture itself was rather ordinary so I had to think of a way of spicing it up.

I sometimes like to use Portray to give a sketched look but it reduces the pixels and changes the size to the iPad size so I don't use it often. As my photo size was square I needed to first change it to the iPad size otherwise the new sketch becomes impossible to blend back with the original.

I open SketchClub and choose the retina canvas size 1536x2048. I then go to the layers and load the image and then export the result.

This I take into Portray. I go to the filters and choose Acrylic Paints and Distressed Card. I then rub over the people and some parts of the building that I want emphasised.

Back in SketchClub I load this image above the original and change the blend mode to Screen. I want to bring back some of the umbrellas and people so I choose the eraser tool, reduce the opacity to about 17% and the size to 54. I zoom in close and lightly erase the areas I want to bring back.

Then it's into Snapseed to change the size to a square again and to tune it bit with some ambience and warmth.

Day 98 of 365 Day Challenge

For people who don't know, Hong Kong has hundreds of fabulous walks and hiking is very popular.

So today I went on a hike with 7 other ladies in the Sai Kung East Country Park. This to me is one the prettiest walks I have done in Hong Kong displaying beautiful coastlines of spectacular rock formations which makes up what is called Hong Kong's Geopark.

Today's picture is one of the natural rock faces which makes this area so special. Weathering has caused this volcanic rock to form hexagonal columns.

Here are two more pictures showing the beautiful coastline and beaches:

Day 91 of 365 Day Challenge

I went hiking today with 9 of my friends around the Aberdeen Reservoir in Hong Kong. It was a lovely day and a very enjoyable stroll catching up with everybody and enjoying the countryside and watching the black kites circling around.

There is lots of dense bush and not many flowers but towards the end of the walk I managed to get a couple of shots of little flowers, so today's picture is yet another flower and below that are some shots of the reservoir and the view. The flower was taken with the Hipstamatic app and the others with a new HDR camera app that I am testing. I set the highlights quite low for the latter shots because it was a very hazy with a sharp light so they have come out perhaps a little dark but I was very pleased with the results considering the harsh light and it is easier to lighten them later than make them darker.

Day 90 of 365 Day Challenge

This week really has been a week of flowers and the city. I was back in Central Hong Kong again and wondering about today's picture when I passed a shop opening it's doors for the first time today (shops change in Hong Kong like people change their underwear!). When a new shop opens there are always a bunch of massive flower arrangements outside the door from various organisations congratulating the shop on it's new venture. I smile because hey, photo opportunity.

So today is yet another flower. The decision is then, do I photograph the flower with Hipstamatic and leave it as it is or do I pimp it up in one of the fabulous apps I have on my iPhone?

Well, I can't resist can I?! So I thought I would take you through the process I went through.  Here is the final result:

So I started off with the original flower that I took using Hipstamatic (Helga Viking lens with Kodot XGrizzed Film):

I decide to take it into Stackables to grunge it up a bit. I touch the star formulas button and the first one is Happiness and I rather like the metallic quality that it produces and wonder what this would look like blended back with the original.

So I take the original into the iColorama app and then choose Effects>Blend and then for Photo choose the Stackables version above to blend with the original. Going through the presets Negation looks interesting. I turn down the Feature opacity to about 70% and apply it. Then I decide to vamp it up slightly be going to Adjust>Vibrance and upping the Vibrance slightly. I save it and this is the result:

I want to accentuate the flower more so I take this version and choose Style>Edges>5 with maximum size to get a black and white outline. I apply this and then go to Style>Coherence>5 to give it a smoother look. The final result is this:

Now to blend the last two together. So in iColorama I bring in the colour version, choose Effects>Blend and then using the preset Multiply, I blend them together to get this:

It's a little bit dark so I decide to lighten it just a tad in Snapseed using the Tune Up option.  Here is the result:

But when I compare it with the original I see that the lovely bright yellow stamens are dark so I have a brainwave. I take the original into Superimpose as a background, I bring in the above version as a foreground and I zoom in really close and mask out the black stamens so that the yellow shows through and Voila, I have what I want which is the first picture.

Here is a picture of all the large flower arrangements outside the store:

Day 89 of 362 Day Challenge

Was in Central Hong Kong today to meet friends and decided to stop by Exchange Square to take some photos because the reflective surfaces there are fantastic. Lucky me, there is a new art installation there at the moment so got this interesting picture:

Day 86 of 365 Day Challenge

I was busy at home today and thought I would get my daily picture in the evening on my way to meet some friends for supper. Of course I ended up leaving later than I wanted to so rushed through Hong Kong Park looking for something to take. Luckily when I got to the fountains I see that they have planted tulips. Yay, something different. So I have yet another flower in this week's lineup.

The picture was taken with Hipstamatic (Helga Viking and Kodot XGRIZZLED) and I thought I would run it through all my auto painting apps to see if any of them produced anything special. By chance I put it through Paper Camera and liked one of the options so I blended it back with the original in SketchClub and got what I liked. It was a tad dark so lightened it slightly in Snapseed. So here is the end result:

Day 82 of 365 Day Challenge

I bought myself a a no-name brand x12 telephoto lens for my iPhone 6 and had my first opportunity to use it today. I didn't have huge expectations of it but I have been hankering after one for a while and it is not always easy to get top quality iPhone accessories in Hong Kong unless they are produced by Apple.

I was down by the City Hall and opposite they have some massive tents up for an exhibition. There were men harnessed to the tops getting ready to give it a wash. So I set up my little tripod which comes with the lens and iphone cover and took a couple of pics. I found it quite difficult to get the focus right on the lens at such a distance. My eyesight isn't the best anymore and I perhaps needed some reading glasses to do it better. I also took some pictures of the tents without the lens and in the end I choose the picture that was taken at a distance as the composition was better. The telephoto lens brought the subjects in just a fraction too close so I couldn't get the whole tent top in as well as the man on the harness. Anyhow I have included both.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Enlighten, Stackables (Repix instead of Stackables for the second picture)

Day 80 of 365 Day Challenge

I have a friend staying with me at the moment and we went to the Tai O fishing village. As we were walking amongst the stilted houses, I managed to get a picture of an old Chinese lady and when I got home I thought, well I'll be it looks like exactly the same lady that I took a picture of in July LAST year when we visited the village for the first time. I know it's the same place, but I'm sorry that's uncanny. Here is this year's and I have included the shot from last year.

So here are two shots of the lady from this year, taken with Hipstamatic and manipulated with Enlighten, a new all round app that has just come out on the iPhone:

 

Last year's picture

Day 79 of 365 Day Challenge

I'm back in Hong Kong and took my friend to see the Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Gardens. I find the Nunnery and Gardens very peaceful and it was a relaxing visit.  Here is a picture of the Pavilion of Absolute Perfection in the middle of the gardens.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Retouch, Stackables, Snapseed

Day 72 of 365 Day Challenge

I took a friend from the UK to Sham Shui Po market today. It's a fascinating place full of little stalls which specialise in particular items. For example there is one stall that just sells second hand remote controls and another that sells second hand drills. The streets too are specialised with one street full of fabric and another dedicated to beads and buttons. The food markets are particularly interesting with some of the meat and fish stalls probably not suitable for the squeamish.

You also see some interesting characters there so this is today's picture. A old man in traditional old dress. It was taken with Hipstamatic and altered using Snapseed, Superimpose, iColorama and the grungework was done in Stackables.

Day 71 of 365 Day Challenge

1881 Heritage, Hong Kong

Apps: Hipstamatic, Snapseed, Retouch, Stackables