Although it’s hard to believe, this is a Decim8-ed version of yesterday’s faked-up airplane shot.  I got into one of those ruts where it was impossible to stop Decim8ing picture after picture, and each one looked spectacular, but I eventually settled on just one to share.

If you only want to try one iPhone photo app, consider Decim8, because it is so random and beyond your control that it’s 100% ok not to “know what you’re doing”.  It does all the messy work for you, all you do is push a button. And sometimes you come up with something you love, completely by accident.

– the Daily Grunge

 Ok, this one is the product of sheer boredom.  I started with a snapshot of a coyote pawprint in sand, and superimposed a metal model airplane I photographed at Restoration Hardware, thinking I might need such an image.

After Superimposing and masking, I applied Astral Glow somewhat sparingly. If you squint a little, it almost looks like a plane in flight over forbidding desert territory.

– the Daily Grunge

The inside of an earth-mover.  I was out for a walk with friends and happened upon a bulldozer or whatever they call these things.  I’ve taken countless pictures of heavy machinery because I love the structured, technical look of hydraulics, but straight pics of bulldozers is pretty boring after the first one or two. So I stuck the iPhone inside the guts of the thing, and dressed it up with Jazz.  Effects:  Tone, Bloom, Plastic and Glass, and a border.  Nice ethereal feeling for such a big clunky dirty thing, eh?

– the Daily Grunge

 A young Asian man turned just in time for me to take his picture.  I dressed him up a little using Jazz (light leakage and bloom mostly).

The horizontal light leakage creates a feeling of movement, when in fact he was sitting still except for turning around. This effect can produce this kind of look, and also a retro-print feeling.  I overdid it here, intentionally, just to see how far I could go with it.  Usually a subtler application makes a better picture.  But this is the Daily Grunge, not the daily nice-and-clean, and I do love to make a statement with my pictures. Also, as I point out from time to time, if you don’t experiment, you don’t grow as an artist.  You must be unafraid to make mistakes, make ugly pictures from time to time, and unafraid to show your work. Embracing this philosophy is the very essence of being an artist.

–  the Daily Grunge

 A Ferrari headlamp.  This thing is absolutely incredible just to look at, and photographs even more jaw-droppingly.  The technical details are amazing, and this car is almost over-styled.  The more you edit a pic of a Ferrari, the better it looks, but after my usual coupling of HDPro and Contrast, repeated in layers about 4 times, I settled on this.  A little Astral Glow and voila.

All PaintFX or course, you can probably chant the above filter names along with me.

– the Daily Grunge

A BIG mushroom.  I’m almost through my mushroom phase, it’s been days since I squatted down in the damp early morning earth to squeeze out a few pics of fungus. Maybe after this one, the intense need to capture these subjects will lift.

Truthfully, I can’t remember how I edited this.  It looks like the “bloom” effect in Jazz, but I don’t think I was heavily into Jazz yet when I did this. Also, the detail on the mushroom cap could only have been done with PaintFX and HDPro effect.

Well, whatever!  Enjoy.

– the Daily Grunge

 Merle did not want me to share a picture of him which revealed his dirty little secret: he was helping me with the grocery shopping.  Here he is seen bagging the produce.

There is nothing more boring than standing around waiting for your order to be rung up, so I always use the bits and pieces of time to snap a few pictures.  (Of course I do this everywhere else I go too.)  It took but a few minutes to grunge the thing up until it resembled a chopped salad.

– the Daily Grunge

three edits of the same shot, done in Photo Jazz, all on iPhone.

 There are some days when your intrepid iPhoneographer is so wrapped up with software development, studying, running, or sometimes even sleeping, that she scarcely has time to take pictures.  But this does not mean that I can abandon my responsibilities to you, my faithful readers.  So if my only chance to take a picture during the day necessarily coincides with a trip to Williams-Sonoma for a spatula, then so be it.  Although a mundane subject, these were actually fun to work on.  Which shows you, any subject can provide opportunities.  Do not overlook the mundane, not all your pictures are going to be of the Eiffel Tower, or truly you will never be able to keep up with a DAILY blog!

– the Daily Grunge

 My guide at the now-infamous (on this blog, at any rate) Carolina Tiger Rescue.  The tour had such a big impact on me that I took at least a hundred pictures while hiking up and down and around, avoiding fire ants and trying to see EVERYTHING there was to see of the mountain lions, Bengal tigers, bear cats, servals, and many more types of wild cats.

Ruth has been working at the tiger rescue for many years, and at one point “adopted” a newborn cub named Eliza, who she said would suck on her finger.  When Eliza reached a certain age she was put into her enclosure and Ruth would never touch her again, although whenever she was near, Eliza would sense her presence and start to roar.  When Eliza died, she was cremated and her ashes sit in an urn in Ruth’s living room.

Ruth is a remarkable woman with an enormous heart and radiant inner strength.  When I first saw her she looked very slight, frail almost, but that impression quickly evaporated as I saw her command of the environment.  Because of people like Ruth, the magnificent animals at Carolina Tiger Rescue now have a decent life, with a large enclosure to roam in, good food, medical care, and no danger of being exploited or outright killed.

– the Daily Grunge