horse power     
photo heart connection november
recycling photos to create new works of art

my creative adventures in iphoneography have been continuing this past month, intensifying during a short stay at the hospital, where i produced a series of digital collages (i organised them in a set on my flickr page)

i am linking this blog post to Kristen Radden's december creative iphoneography challenge as well as Kat Sloma's november photo heart connection.

on november 14th i went to the seaside with my dad and shot this steel rocking horse with my iPhone. i later used several apps to turn it into a golden stead fit for a fairy tale. i just loved that horse….. so i used miracam's x-ray filter to create another shiny version of it and then cut it off of its pedestal and out of its frame….. wanting to use it as a symbol in some of my collages. i even gave it a name and called it Silverado :-)) for me it served as a kind of magical power horse that would rescue me from all the fear and hurt associated with my surgery.

never in my wildest dreams

yearning for salvation

speed of light

stage fright

bridging the gap

dreaming of horses

these six images were created in the ten days just before, during and after my stay in the hospital. looking at them now, i can still feel the horse's (and my creative spirit's) incredible magical healing power…….

the art of shopping          
fine art photography with my iPhone
discovering the extra in the ordinary

this past month i have been totally engrossed in iphoneography. taking shots of whatever 'tugged at my sleeve', things that somehow begged to be perceived, to be explored further, transferring them on to my iPad and then playing around with a number of apps, trying to coax out the deeper image hidden inside.
what i love most of all is window shopping, capturing the different layers of the goods on display, the activities in the back of the store,  the reflections of people passing by behind me and the street life in the background. always far too much to see in one glimpse, therefore loads to discover when poring over my shots later on....

here are three jackets from the same fashion store, the first one has big white clouds and steel poles through its collar and a brick wall  coming out of its side. the second one reflects me, next to a bright yellow application of an owl with huge round dark eyes. the third one has a  beautiful pattern with some cars reflected in the middle, like a belt.

all of them fascinating, captivating, definitely worth post processing.

this time i decided to combine them and take them to another level. i blended them together, post processed them with some of my favorite apps and then painted in some subtle details with a drawing app. so here's the hidden image. i call it 'bird's-eye view'. and i am totally in love with it!

joining october's photo heart connection at KatEye Studio

broadening my horizon

facing the band and following the music

photo heart connection september

last month i upgraded my Olympus PEN P3 to a P5. now i had a new lens to try out, the 17mm 1:8 wide angle. 

after using the 40-150 zoom for a year a whole new world opened up to me.....

the first opportunity to get a feel for my new lens: the hague, near the town palace where the royal brass band was practicing for the opening day of Dutch parliament. 

i saw (or rather: heard) them coming towards me out of a side street and immediately grabbed my new camera.

even when they came real close i still could get a whole row of them in focus....wow! including the man staring in the distance at the other side of the street.... 

after they passed i decided to follow them on my electric scooter, feeling like a paparazza. i wasn't the only one chasing them, as you can see :-)

until they finally halted to perform some drum solos and i was able to capture the halos around their helmets and the intriguing shadows on the street.

this lens has literally broadened my horizon and increased my possibilities as a photographer. 
almost a year ago i did a similar shoot of a brass band with my 40-150. to compare the quality of the two lenses you can click here. 

magic hour

reviewing last year's inspiration file, (created for my first 'find your eye' course) i found a lot of my photographs were taken at 'magic hour', the moment day starts turning into night (or night into day) and the light becomes dreamlike, diffuse, mysterious.

the land behind my house,  march 23 2012 6 pm. the colours speak to me of melancholia, a kind of sadness about the ending of the day

the hague, 7 pm on june 30 2012. last light breaking through the clouds, illuminating the sea, not a soul in sight, just water, sky and a majestic view. awesome.

this one is from my recently updated inspiration file.
august 21 2013 8.42 pm. daylight's almost gone, the sky has turned a pink purple and the trees have become silent silhouettes, weakly lit by the light beams from the golf course.

morning's magic hour is a bit too early for me, but at dusk you can usually find me outside, savouring those magical moments

more light.....

light seems to permeate all my photo work, even my iphone art....

if it isn't there in the photograph, i simply add it with an app :-()

if it's there, i tend to enhance it as much as possible.

i love playing with photo apps!

light

for Kat Sloma's Find Your Eye course i collected some of last month's favourite photo work in an 'inspiration folder.
here are three photographs that made my heart jump while browsing my Lightroom catalog.
all three express my fascination with light.

light falling through a yellowed leaf and a tangle of spiderwebs in the park

light falling through the stained glass windows of an old church

lights in the night, reflected in the dark river, just after a boat has passed

i seem to love light a lot ;-0

photo heart connection august

these two images represent my most inspiring and exciting event in august.

after meeting at one of Kat Sloma's classes last year, Elsie and i started a collaborative photoblog. 

on the 30th of august we met each other in person for the very first time in Utrecht.

we had an amazing day together.

august break 29,30,31

here are the last three days of the august break
and more apps: plastic bullet, pixlr-o-matic, polyframe, rays, painteresque

august break week 4

new apps this week: jazz, afterlight, glaze and mextures