I just started playing with an app that is new to me; Fragment. This is the second image produced this evening, using an improvised workflow.

Camera club assignment gone wrong/right.

Abstraction fun. #abstract #Oggl_ig

I like a challenge and I like photography. Consequently, I totally get into photographic challenges. The ones set for the abstract photographers at my photo club are particularly fun, as they often involve me going places I've never been before, without having to step outside.
"An image in the style of Barnett Newman" was the instruction. I'd never heard of him before, but I know of his work now and I really like it. I haven't achieved an image in his style yet, but I do rather like what I produced here. Both the final colour image ("Zip 1") and the Oggl afterthought image ("Zip 2").

I started with a blank canvas and painted onto it with colours that were reasonably close to what I wanted for the background. I used Photo Viva for this.

Waterlogue is an app I've never used before. I ran the previous image through the "travelogue" preset.

Now, I am messing around with the 'artist' tab in the Brushes section in iColorama. I think I also blurred the image just slightly in BlurFX, as I wanted the iColorama paint "strokes" to be just a little less distinct.

I had taken a number of photos of just about every zip I could find in the house. The plastic ones abounded, but they're no good. Only the metal ones stand out. I used Superimpose to lay one zip onto the previous image. I masked out the material from alongside the zip and also used the blur function to sink the zip into the background. I knew I wanted subsequent zips to stand out progressively more, in order to create an illusion of depth, which is a hallmark of some of Barnett Newman's impressionist paintings. I've also taken it back into iColorama to add some more 'brushwork', to further place the zip into the background.

Now, I've superimposed another zip. Well, actually it's the same zip, turned upside down. I want this zip to look a little closer to the viewer, so there's very little blur added to it. I have added a little more brushwork in iColorama too, as this zip is not going to be in the foreground. Why did I place the zips where I did? They looked better against the blue than against the green.

I have added a splash over the second zip with iColorama, just to keep it in the middle ground; closer than the first zip, but further away than the next one.

Another (different) zip goes in, using Superimpose. I am thinking about balance in the image now, which is why it felt like it had to go where I put it. Now, I'm thinking I need a fourth zip though.

There's no image 8. I just can't count. The last zip is in. I don't think the vertical lines are very well balanced, but I do like the depth that the zips are bringing to the image.

Next, I have very painstakingly masked out the bits inbetween the teeth of the zip, so the background colour can be seen. Definitely worth the effort. I am basically finished with composing the image, now it just needs finishingoff, which I usually do in Snapseed.

But I didn't use Snapseed this time. I played around with Pixlromatic, using one of the colour filters ('Hagrid') and one of the masks ('Above'), which seemed to add some further depth to the image. And that was it. This is "Zips 1".

Something told me to try a square crop, and try it in Oggl. This is that crop, which uses theLowy lens and BlacKeys Supergrain film.

I just can't help myself now. "Wonder what it looks like turned sideways?". Did that in Snapseed and also turned the temperature right up, to get the sepia look. It now looks like some kind of weird desert scene with....er....zips. I think it looks really cool.

Sophie in NYC, probably Gates Avenue station.

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 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!

The summer school holiday is coming to its end and time is running out before the working routine kicks back in. Maybe that's why the compulsion to work at photo editing has been so strong.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening refining this technique. It arose from work I did the day before, going back to the paintings of Turner. That particular avenue led to an unsatisfying dead end. A second attempt yesterday afternoon also ended in emptiness.

In the evening, just to keep myself awake, I went back to the earlier failure and streamlined it, carefully noting what I did. This was the result, which I took heart in. Three hours work.

From there, the process got refined a little and the rest of the evening was magic.

Art of Mob. Painterly Mobile Art #21.

Firstly today, some uninspiring results from the Queensland images. Sometimes what you start with is just a dog and that's what you end up with at the end. With other images, like the forest snail ("Round Midnight") you can't go wrong and every step works. I stuck with the frogs and got somewhere by eventually combining two different attempts at editing the same photo. Then this photo jumped up at me - why hadn't I noticed it before? It took several attempts to get the signpost right - just dropping a grunged signpost in made some difference and then the inspiration to take the final version back into iColorama was genius.