I shot a separate (and similarly massive) number of swimmers at the swimming carnival on Valentine's Day. As a race timer, I was required to peer over the edge of the pool and click the timer hanging round my neck when the competitor's hand touched the wall. "I can do that left-handed", I thought. So I multitasked, holding the iPhone in my right hand at the same time, shooting in burst mode. Some really pleasing results, after basic edits done in Snapseed, re-sizing in Filterstorm, colour tones added in iColorama (mainly tints) and then some more fine tuning in Lightroom 4. There is a gallery.

This image was picked up and featured this week. All three abstractions of the Opera House have been well-supported on Flickr this week.

Not such good news from iPhoneart.com, which intends to fold as an image-sharing location/community next week. Seems that, like me, many users feel it is unique and the best community for up-and-comers and old hands. I will miss it.

I haven't really spent much time with my DSLR lately. I dusted it off for Friday's swimming carnival at school. I don't think I've had such a compelling bunch of images to edit. It's probably also the first time that I've had a serious look at the quality of the images that my 7D captures with the Canon 24-105. Very happy with what I got. So much so that I reckon I spent five or six hours in Lightroom with them yesterday. Dusting some cobwebs away there too.

This week has been all about abstraction. I have a set of three edits of a shot I took in 2012 in Muscat, of the rather splendid Royal Opera House. This is my favourite edit. It uses Snapseed here and there (regular contrast edits) plus iColorama, Glaze and Superimpose. I have a good, defined workflow which is doing it for me right now!

This week, I experienced "Exhibition Night" at the camera club I've joined. Still haven't got my head around the whole idea of the monthly undressing, but I put two images in nevertheless.

The judge's report ends up being a drawn-out affair. I didn't catch his name. A Swiss-French man now living and working in Perth. A long time spent on plastic chair, intermittently clapping politely. I can't say I didn't enjoy the suspense of viewing the submitted images and the feedback provided by the judge. There were some super images and some dross.

Pleasingly, I must admit, what I submitted stood up well. In the 'Open' category, "In The Pines III" rated 'Bronze'. He suggested that a crop would have improved the image. I think he was right.

I also submitted "Cavalia III" which I think he reflected might have earned a 'Gold', had I cropped the extraneous horizon on either side. A 'Silver' was nonetheless a thrill and a confirmation that I can hold my own.