elections expliquees

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simplifying; new address...

In the interest of simplifying and consolidating...

...instead of having to type the dash in ex-oculis.blogspot.com,

   I'm changing over to the simpler 

EXOCULIS.blogspot.com

So.

This blog has moved.

Thank you for checking it out!

A couple of Honorable Mentions!

For the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards "Travel" category,

two of my submissions made "Honorable Mention!"

One from Seoul:

Hyangweonjeon, or "The Pavilion of Far-reaching Fragrance,"

in Gyeongbokgung Palace,

is one of the loveliest spots in Seoul.

(ColorSplash app in addition to snapseed

used for both of these images,

taken with an iPhone 4.)

...and the other from the opposite side of S. Korea,

from the coastal city of Sokcho:

"Red Doors, Sokcho, Korea"

(Abai village neighborhood)

So, if you happen to be in New York City 

February 22-28,

these images will be among those on display

at the SOHO Gallery for Digital Art...

Check out the rest of the winners and runners-up;

so compelling, and all taken and edited solely with mobile devices.

It's such a thrill and privilege to know that a couple of my iphoneographic efforts 

will be on display with all of these great images...

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.

more Sabino Canyon iPhone photos...with SNAPSEED

My sister-in-law is in town. Yesterday my wife and I took her for the obligatory visit to Sabino Canyon; seeing the remaining fall color in the canyon made me return there today to go for a late-morning run.

I took along my iPhone, strapped to my wrist--here are a few photos from the first day of winter here in Tucson. The autumn foliage begins late here in the desert; the cottonwoods, sycamores and ash are often at their peak right around the winter solstice:

...perfect morning light...

The recent rains have replenished the creek, which is flowing higher than normal:

...the cottonwoods are glorious:

And below, a few photos from yesterday evening, when we took my sister-in-law:

So yes, you can tell that these iPhone photos have been 'manipulated' a bit--yep, I'm playing with a new app I just got: "Snapseed," which was recently named by Apple as one of the best apps of the year, 'app of the year,' in fact!


For photo-editing in the palm of your hand, this app is amazing! It allows you to do all sorts of correcting--'teasing out' what your eyes see in cases of tricky exposure in addition to applying filters. For example, the photo above began as this:

And here's another 'fixed' photo...

...and its original dark form:

And one more before...

...and after:

Snapseed has truly been a 'toy' the past couple of days--and with plenty of photo-fodder in the canyon, I've been playing a lot. The editing features are so easy to learn how to use--very intuitive--and I'm still blown away that I can do it all in the palm of my hand just seconds after taking the original photo!


I'm overusing the 'tilt and shift' filter right now, (also known as 'miniature' or 'toy' effect), but the effect can be fun, so here are a few more examples, from photos I happened to have on my phone:

The Old Courthouse and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis:

A bit of old almost lost amidst the new in central Seoul,

the late Yi-dynasty 'Altar of Heaven' in the garden of the Westin Hotel:

More old/new in Seoul--the grounds of Toksu-gung Palace in the center of the city:

And something more 'local'--the 1920's Pima County Courthouse in downtown Tucson:



in and around Sabino Canyon on an afternoon run

We've had a string of stormy days here in the desert: cold rain on the cacti and snowcapped mountains...

The sun came out late the other afternoon, so I took my iPhone with me on a run in the hills above Sabino Canyon. Although the photos aren't really suitable for printing larger than 5x7 or 8x10, the quality of the images that the iPhone camera can capture continues to impress me:

    (panorama above pieced together using the AutoStitch app on the iPhone)

...and down in the canyon itself, the creek is flowing strong

and the late fall cottonwoods are coloring its banks:

It was a late afternoon of "photo-fartlekking"--a great way to combine photography and trail-running.

No, really, "fartlekking" is a real word--here's more information on this training method for runners. (It comes from the Swedish for "speed play".)

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

A couple of colleagues of mine have started a new

literary and visual arts journal: Three Coyotes,

published here in Tucson.

Its mission: to publish "the work of our best poets, writers and artists
in response to the environment, the American West,
current issues, animals, the arts,
imagination and survival."

So, incidentally, in this year's Fall/Winter issue, which just came out,

this photo of mine was published--on page 121:

"Eye Contact"

iPhone photos from a Black Friday hike in Bear Canyon...and some collages from elsewhere

For local day-hikes, when you want to be unencumbered with stuff, the iPhone is such a handy camera...and various apps allow for some pretty clean stitched-together panoramas--perfect for the landscape around Tucson...

'Black Friday' has been a hiking day for me the past few years, far from the madding crowds of the malls...Last week, I sprained my ankle; I was afraid I might not be able to go for a hike this year, but fortunately, it seems to be healing quickly. So, yesterday, a couple of friends and I met for breakfast and then headed to Bear Canyon, just a fifteen minute drive from mid-town Tucson.

Above image pieced together from three vertical phone-photos, using the AutoStitch app.
[This photo was just published in the Tucson newspaper's Foothills section.]

Two weekends ago, I went for a trail-run in here, and there wasn't much water--we've had a pretty rainy November, though, so the creek's been 're-charged'...just enough for some reflective pools among the fall color...

The trail to Seven Falls is mostly flat, although it does zigzag across a boulder-strewn creek for a couple of miles before switchbacking a few hundred feet up the south wall of the canyon.

...and after 3 1/2 miles, voilà Seven Falls:

vertical panorama from two photos

I pieced together eight phone-pics for this panorama--gives an idea of the terrain:

...from the left of the photo--looking down and out Bear Canyon toward the southwest, to Tucson...to the right of the photo--looking straight west into the Santa Catalina mountains, at Seven Falls, cascading down a steep smooth-stone gorge...


We shared the trail with lots of other post-turkey hikers--nice to see groups of multigenerational trekkers--grandparents, their kids and grandkids--all together, outdoors as family instead of being indoors somewhere amidst the consumer-frenzy...

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

Last week, while 'nursing' the sprained ankle, I had some time to play with a few older photos; I'd been meaning to group some together:

Desert Doorways: Tucson's Barrio Viejo

On the western edge of the city is "Old Tucson," the tv/movie set theme park of ersatz wild west streets. But the REAL Old Tucson is here: just south of the downtown core, full of preserved and restored adobe houses.

The Hohokam and Tohono O'odham peoples lived in this area long before Europeans arrived. The year before The Declaration of Independence was signed on the other end of the continent, the Spanish set up a presidio here. By 1821, this outpost became a Mexican settlement; it wasn't until 1854, with the Gadsden Purchase, that Tucson became a U.S. territorial town.

As with most western U.S. cities, strip-malls that could be from anywhere can sometimes detract from the mountainous setting...but seek history and you shall find; colors and stories in the desert abound.

When I first walked around the Barrio Viejo, I almost felt as if I were in a Mediterranean village...later, I came across this description, written by a Dr. J.H. Robinson of Columbia University, who visited Tucson for the first time in the 1930’s:

"But this cannot be the United States of America, Tucson, Arizona! This is northern Africa - Tunis! Algiers! - or even Greece, where I have seen as here, houses built flush with the sidewalks with pink, blue, green and yellow walls, flowers climbing out of hidden patios and overall, an unbelievable blue sky. And the sweet-acrid smell in the air? Burning mesquite. Lovely! And the people - charming. But all this is the Old World, not America."

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

Communing with ducks on the Sorgue

Ahh, to lie in a hammock on a summer afternoon in the South of France...

My wife and I had gone to visit friends who lived in LeThor, a town of a few thousand on the banks of the Sorgue River in Provence. (Between the very visited cities of Avignon and L'Île-sur-la-Sorgue, Le Thor is a quiet gem.) Their house was built into the medieval wall, just around a bend in the river from a 12th-century Romanesque church. We rowed a bit in the shade of plane trees, ducks for company...

In between the wall and the river, just enough room for a hammock, a table and four chairs--des olives, du pastis, and la sieste: perfect...

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

Sedona: into the elements...

Color, shape, naked geology--Northern Arizona appeals to senses in the most elemental ways. Agnostic hikers, secular scientists, souls searching for spiritual energy--all end up in Sedona, seeking and finding.

Mid-week in this red-rock country, we found a few days of calm--early morning trails around town, afternoons in galleries seeking shelter from summer thunderstorms. Weekends bring crowds from Phoenix, just two hours to the south, but away from pavement, you can still get away, going into the elements.

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

Coffee-crazy in Korea's capital

Seoul has to be Asia's most caffeinated mega-city. There is plenty of tea to be had, but coffee rules in Korea's capital.

Along with an abundance of multi-storied Starbucks, every street seems to have sprouted a home-grown café: from the Italian-inspired (Pascucci, Caffe Bene) to the French (Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours), the sacreligious (God in a cup) and the pseudo-religious (Angel-in-us), royal (Coffee Prince) and musical (Johannes Brahms), prepositions ("at-to-on"?), from the purely Asian (Gurunaru), to delightfully fractured English (Yoger presso, A twosome place, Me Too, cafe sand&food). Coffee and kimchee--it's what Koreans run on!

As erstwhile Seattlites, my wife and I had our fun sampling the different interpretations of the bean while in Seoul. Some were good, some were bad, many were puzzling (red bean latte? black bean latte? GREEN bean latte?), and most all were pricey...

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


Musicians: a palace restored

Late spring and early summer in Seoul: musicians in medieval clothing infuse the grounds of Gyeongbok Palace with a sense of its storied past.

Built in the 1390's when a new dynasty established Seoul as its capital, Gyeongbok-gung ("The Palace of Shining Happiness") was a city unto itself. In the 1590's, in the chaos of the Japanese invasions, the palace was burned and lay largely in ruins until the 19th century. The reconstruction almost bankrupt the kingdom, and then the grounds were the scene of the assassination of Korea's last empress. During the Japanese colonization (1910-1945), eighty-five percent of the palace compound was either destroyed or dismantled...

The last two decades have seen a remarkable period of revival and rebuilding. Today about forty percent of the palace has been restored. With colorful concerts, tea-ceremonies, and the changing of the guard, this palace is shining once again.

Years ago, during a summer staying with relatives, I had visited Gyeongbok-gung. Two decades later, it was such a treat to revisit the Palace, renewed, and with a 'live soundtrack.'

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

vibrant morning palette

...scenes from a morning in the midst of autumn's palette in Odae-san National Park: steam ascending from temple breakfast fires at sunrise, climbing up through maples and pungent gingkoes, happening upon a folk-painting of a tiger on a trail-side shrine...

I'd tagged along with my uncle as he drove from Seoul to the mountains along the east coast of Korea. We were going to pick up my aunt, who'd just spent a week-long retreat at Sang-won-sa, a "Seon" ('Zen' in Korean) temple established in the year 643. While they spent the morning around the grounds, I went for a hike.

This national park, near the site of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, is dotted with Buddhist sites established in the 6th and 7th centuries. (Odae-san is one of Korea's 'holy mountains.') During the fall, the temple's vibrant architecture blends in perfectly with the forested slopes; the colors of the folk-paintings seem to spring from the mountains themselves.