Literally.  A closeup of a red onion I was slicing for potato salad (which came out fantastic, by the way).

Food is often amazing when you look closely,  especially veggies.  It was a humid day, the onion began to “sweat”, so I picked up a slightly greasy iPhone and snapped this closeup.  There was a little post-processing: contrast, saturation, etc, which gave the juice a gold tint, almost like mercury

The iPhone does a pretty decent job up-close like this.  There are macro clip-on lenses, which I will undoubtedly be trying and reviewing here soon.  For now though, I think the 4s’s 8 megapixel camera is pretty impressive straight off the factory floor.

For the curious, my potato salad recipe:

• 8 – 10 small red potatoes, halved and boiled
• 2 small pickling cukes, sliced thin
• 4 large red radishes, sliced thin
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 1/4 cup mayo
• 2 tblsp dijon mustard
• salt and pepper to taste

That’s it.  Combine, let sit in the frig for a few hours (better yet, overnight).  So good it’s the stuff of legend in my neighborhood.

I love groups of objects but try to avoid pictures of them for some reason.  I shouldn’t, because as I so often say, photography is about your own vision.

Last Friday night, instead of going dancing, dining or to the theatre, I found myself at Home Depot looking for a good thatching rake.  The details of this excursion are not important, but instead of grumping about it, I decided to make use of the time taking pictures of garden implements.  Forget Venice.  Take pictures where you are.  Train your eye by going to a hardware store and finding one thing to take a picture of.  Garden hoses coiled up, jumbles of plumbing fixtures, and tools lined up all make great subjects.

I glossed up these shovel pictures (grunged them up, actually, which for me is glossing) to sand off some of the ordinariness.

Just to make sure I don’t take myself too seriously, I offer a couple of just-for-funs.  I am, for the record, deathly afraid of sharks.  I don’t consider this to be a phobia because it seems eminently prudent to be afraid of a creature that can swallow you whole.  Anyway, I came across a fabulous picture of a Great White that scared the bejabbers out of me, so had no choice but to make it look as silly as possible.

While waiting for a ride outside a mall, I aimed my iPhone at a fountain where children were playing.  The fountain jets turned on at irregular intervals and as luck would have it, it sprayed up just as I snapped the topmost picture.  A few seconds later I took the second picture, of the little girl lost in thought.  It looks as though she might be injured, but she wasn’t, just bemused.

These were kind of challenging to edit.  Coming straight off the camera they didn’t look very good, but with adjustments to contrast, brightness, highlights, and shadows, it started to look better.  Then, I used PaintFX to intensify the contrast of just the water stream, and also to make the floor a little darker to make the water jump out a little more.

But the little waif is my subject here, looking so disconnected from the busy modern world that was just a few feet away from her; her parents clearly unable to afford a pool membership or summer camp.  Fountain time was probably the only relief from the heat that she would get. The stone tiles were cool.  Why get up and move? Nothing was waiting except a hot car ride home.

Just plain old water, beaded up on a glass on a hot humid day. Took a shot as close as I could get, then boosted the contrast. This is just a plain iPhone camera, and look at the resolution! I have barely begun to explore what this camera can do. To call it “point and shoot” is an injustice; when it gets right down to it, you have to point and then shoot with ANY camera. There are a lot of reasons to use an iPhone camera, chief among them: it’s always with you; you can do closeups like this one with excellent resolution; and, there is no end to the editing you can do right on the phone, even with one hand, while talking on the phone (if you desire to work that way), with nobody being any wiser as to what you are doing.

This is another way to photograph water. The closer you look at water, the more you will see. Spill a few drops of water on a table, and photograph that. Something will always be reflected; play around until you can get a tiny clear reflection in a drop.

I know, I’ve been doing lots of wheels. But I just can’t seem to lay off of them, is it time to have me carted off to the bughouse? Am I going around the bend? (AROUND the bend, get it?) Not only that, but i can’t stop editing this ferris wheel picture. I’ll edit, crop, colorize, grunge, then undo undo undo, and edit some more. Add contrast, some blur, old paper effect, undo undo undo. Exactly what I always say NOT to do. Thing is, this wheel looks good no matter what I do to it, so I don’t want to stop. Maybe something square would be good to freshen my eye.

At lunch I was taking the seeds out of a melon and noticed the star shape of the center and thought THAT might be a good shape to focus on. Of course, melons are round too, like … wheels. What goes around comes around …

Someone stop me!

At this time of year, you can buy fireworks in open tents in parking lots all over North Carolina. This was unheard of in New England, so I decided to check it out with my camera.  As soon as I started snapping pictures, the proprietor took great issue: “you getting pictures of my prices? Huh?” He was southern-nice, but clearly about to toss me out on my ear.  When you do street photography you always have a story ready though, so I went into my act: “Oh! I’m hoping you can help me, I have no idea what any of this stuff is.  My sister is coming down with her kids, I want to get them something fun and she wants it to be safe.  I figured I’d let her pick out what to get, if you can tell me what these are.”

So of course he became very helpful and I ended up buying a bunch of stuff to make it look good, but it’s a little disturbing.  He picked up a canister — and this thing was as big as a small bucket — and said it was totally safe because it didn’t “propel” into the air.  In NC, all fireworks are safe because they stay on the ground, apparently.  However, he allowed that it sent a shower of sparks 20 feet high and 20 feet in diameter, and was the same as you see “in a professional fireworks show, but they stay on the ground”.

Now can someone tell me how that is “perfectly safe”?  And furthermore, the packaging is clearly designed to appeal to children.  “Ooooh, this one looks cute, it was a little birdie on it,” But no, some people won’t buy the stuff because, in his words, “it’s TOO safe”.

I didn’t start out planning a diatribe against fireworks, I just wanted to show this interesting retail niche.  So, without further ado, I present the “Dancing Sombreros”.  Sounds like a mariachi band, but louder.

This is one of the first iPhone photos I took, at the North Carolina State Fair.  I thought the people looked so lonely up there, just whirling around in space, so far from each other, from the ground … nobody was even screaming, which made is seem that much worse, as though they were resigned to their lonely, twirling lives.

I’ve always loved this picture, with the dramatic sky in the background, but after I applied an “Astro” effect using Paint FX, I almost fell over, it made it look so much more interesting, and enhanced the “spaciness” of the whole thing, making it surreal. What an odd thing we humans do:  paying money to be taken up a pole and spun around in midair until we are sick; it’s really a moment that needs to be exaggerated photographically.

This is one of those pictures I just can’t leave alone.  I’ve been working on this one for months and am determined to get it to a point where I am satisfied.  Not quite there yet, but closer.

I took this at the North Carolina State Fair, a major event in the state. This woman was playing skeeball, I think it was, $.50 a game, with her Marlboros, a big coke, and looking about 100 years old, although she is probably closer to 60.  Her life seemed writ large in the wrinkles on her face, the resignation, the tiredness. Hoping to spend enough at skeeball to win some small prize, or maybe just play so that she could be sitting down.

The problem with the photo is that half her face is in bright sun, the other half in deep shadow.  I have tried many, many edits to try and balance things out, but finally tried PaintFX, which allows me to dodge and burn on the iPhone by dragging my finger over the areas to make brighter or darker.  There are many adjustments you can make to the size, shape, and intensity of the light you are adding or subtracting, and it takes quite a bit of practice to get it right.

The picture is getting there, but I don’t kid myself that I’m done with it.

This looks abstract, but really isn’t.  I almost hate to say what it is and spoil the affect, but it is nothing more than my salad plate after I had finished everything except one leaf of spinach.  The oil from the dressing was swirled around (ooo! spiral!) into a wonderful pattern. I made it black and white and cropped it a little.  The plate was already white, so a little boost to the contrast was all it needed.

I greatly resent the use of smartphones — ANY phone — at the table, so I can’t remember taking this.  I can only surmise that my husband was using his iPhone and out of simple boredom, I took a picture of my food.  So sad 🙂