The Great East Gate, published...

Recently, the afar.com magazine site featured this:

--a photo of a fruit vendor's cart 

in front of Dongdaemun,

the old East Gate of Seoul...

Afar.com has a weekly feature entitled

"What we're reading"

--a collection of the editors' current recommendations...

One of the recommendations was a link

to this article in the Smithsonian magazine,

"Welcome to Seoul, City of the Future."

(it's a great read!)

Thus, the context for using my photo...

published, from this past spring...and a scene of the desert's 'second spring'

Published in this past Thursday's Tucson newspaper,

a scene from this past spring:

(also available as a card; click on "photo-cards" tab above)

And from just last weekend,

a scene of some of the wildflowers 

near Sabino Canyon, just north of Tucson--

the monsoon rains bring what 

some call a 'second spring' in the desert:

--paperflower, sacred datura, and morning glory--

(taken with iPhone4;

edited using 

snapseed, PicFrame, and ColorSplash apps)

Back from the NW...and a profile

My wife and I were able to spend the first part of this month back in the Pacific NW--friends, family, familiar food and landscapes...


...and my new 'favorite hiking panorama' is this, stitched together from 8 photos, taken above Lake Colchuck during a hike in the central Cascades, about 2h45 out of Seattle, and not far from Leavenworth:

A perfect summer day: the peak in the middle is Dragontail Peak, with Aasgard Pass to its left...the jade color of the lake is caused by the presence in the water of 'rock flour'--glacially ground...

I also played with my iPhone a lot; to see some of those images, click here.

And, while up in Seattle, I was informed (and flattered) that I am being 'highlighted' with a little profile article on the website of the travel magazine AFAR...

"early blooms"...

...always a fun surprise to find a photo published in the morning paper:

"Around the World in Color"...two out of twelve...and voting still possible!

Afar, the travel magazine, recently posted this album on its facebook page:

...photos from yours truly...

--the first one circled is of the Astronomers' monument in Griffith Park, in the hills above Los Angeles:

(took and edited this on my phone)

The one underneath is one of my favorite photos from the year my wife and I lived in Nicaragua:

I was biking around the colonial university city of León, Nicaragua, running errands...a colorful building across the street caught my eye, and since I had my camera in my backpack, I stopped, got off my bike and took a couple of shots. But then, when I turned around to get back on my bike, I noticed that it was parked against THIS vibrant wall. Wow--COLOR! A humble wooden building, instead of the more typical stone-and-stucco structure--when I leaned the bike against the wall I hadn't even noticed it; I'd biked up and down this street many times without really seeing it. Stop and park. Notice.

AND--you can still vote for us for the 'Dream Trip Photo Contest!' 
(please please please...yes, this is shameless...)

Condé Nast tweeted this earlier today:

Thanks for your support!

"slow food in a fast country"...highlighted

...if you go to afar.com during the upcoming week, 

you'll get to the source of the staple of Korean food--rice paddies:

...and clicking on the link, here's the text of the highlight:

Here's more from that day...

(And please don't forget to go to condenasttraveler.com/dreamtrip from May 22 through June 11 to vote for the photo,"changing of the guard in Seoul," in the "Dream Trip" contest!)

finalist in Condé Nast Traveler, and...

Last summer, I took this photo while in Seoul--the re-enacting of the medieval changing-of-the-guard at Gyeong-bok-gung Palace:

Well, it turns out that this photo is now a finalist in the Condé Nast $25,000 Dream Vacation contest!
(I just found out this morning.) Out of the thousands of photos submitted, this will be one of twenty-five finalists that will be featured from May 22 to June 11 on their website...Unapologetically, I'm asking you to go to the Condé Nast website during those dates and 'vote.' Merci, gracias, & ko-map-seum-ni-da!

=====================================

...and,

This week, on the afar.com homepage:   

...and below is the highlight:

(always a thrill to be published)

the bird in the middle; from Costa Rica

...another week, another home-page feature on afar.com!

The selection of thumbnails of highlights changes weekly, but at least for this week, my parrot photo from Costa Rica is being featured...It's been fun to catch the eye of the editors at that travel magazine website...Below is the full highlight. 

lost in the desert spring; a highlighted photo

On the homepage of afar.com this week,

note the bottom middle thumbnail:

...a larger view of the photo-highlight,

taken a few weeks ago:

 

a homepage link to Mexico

This week, on the homepage of the afar.com website, a photo I took in central Mexico years ago is featured as part of a 'highlight' slideshow:

From that link, you can go to the 'highlight:'

planting a seed...

So I'm starting a new blog--in addition to this one--one of the estimated 175,000 created every day...why?

Because I couldn't find one out there that specialized in what the new blog is going to feature: 'snapseeded' photos.


Since getting the snapseed app a couple of months ago, I've been continuously amazed at the creative possibilities of photo-editing on my iPhone--at home, on the go, on my lunch-hour, or even while taking a stretching-break during a trail-run--I literally have a digital darkroom in the palm of my hand! And instead of being a one-trick wonder, snapseed allows the iPhoneographer/iPhotographer to do play with a whole range of powerful, creative editing.

I spent a good portion of last summer abroad, and I ended up with hundreds of snapshots on my iPhone, almost as many, in fact, as I took with my 'real' camera...As soon as I downloaded snapseed, I began to experiment with those travel photos...and then after a few weeks I began to e-mail some 'regular' photos, including old, scanned pics to my iPhone just so that I would be able to edit them with snapseed.

Whether I'm traveling elsewhere, or just in my home city, I'm always on the lookout for details and a sense of place. Proust's well-known statement, "the real voyage of discovery consists not [necessarily] in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes," is often in the back of my mind as I look around...and so I include a paraphrase of his quote in the new blog's title:
"Snapseeded

...'seeing with new eyes'--with a digital darkroom in the palm of your hand"

Occasional postings will continue here...'snapseeded photos' from now on, there.