Day 139 of 365 Day Challenge

Apps: Snapseed, Facetune, SketchClub, Aerograph but mainly iColorama.

Day 138 of 365 Day Challenge

Time for another selfie. It never ceases to amaze me how different each one comes out. Believe me, they do not look like me by the end! Who needs a model!

I used Snapseed to crop and Facetune to enhance but it was was done mainly in iColorama with one blend done with a Mobile Monet version.

Day 117 of 365 Day Challenge

So today is my first trip into China, a visit to the Dafen Art Village in Shenzhen which is just over the border from Hong Kong. You can take the Hong Kong MTR (underground) to Lo Wu, you cross over the border and pick up the Shenzhen MTR. One change from the Blue line to the Green line at Laojie, then up to Dafen on this line. You go to the A exit and take the right stairs down and just a short walk down the road is the village. Rows and rows of shops with oil paintings. Most formula, some original, some very good, some very bad. You can take your own photo along with you and have it painted! Down the little alleys inbetween the shops, dozens of painters sit churning out paintings.

As well as the shops selling paintings there are some amazing art supply shops with everything an oil painter could want. Massive rolls of canvasses, easels, paints, you name it. The most fascinating are the shops full of brushes and not just small ones, massive ones as big as long wigs!

Choosing a photo to use today was really difficult but in the end I have chosen one of a Shenzhen painter, painting an old fasioned painting. My next choice but my husband's favourite was a picture of one of the alleys with all the canvases lined up ready to sell! I had to also include a picture of the brushes and shop.

 

 

 

Check out the massive brushes below on the right

Day 115 of 365 Day Challenge

I am absolutely loving the new Snapseed app release.

When I first opened it I was a bit dismayed because I had got used to the original setup and it felt different and not so easy to use but it has been surprising how quickly I adapted to it. In terms of cleaning up photos, I don't believe anything beats it now. On the way to get groceries today, I saw loads of bees hovering around some lilies. Just the perfect photo opportunity. When I got home it was straight into Snapseed and voila, I have my photo for the day. No other app needed.

Day 114 of 365 Day Challenge

Have you ever walked out of a cafe and forgotten to pay? Well, it happened to me today and it is always something you dread.

I went to this wonderful little French cafe called, Cafe Lavande, which is towards the top of the Mid-Levels escalator at 4A Prince's Terrace. The cakes look absolutely delicious but I settled for a lovely cup of blossoming Chinese flower tea. The flower is in a ball and it slowly opens, releasing it's fragance and becomes this pretty submerged flower.

Anyhow, I had ordered the tea at the counter and because I had paid up front all day I had it in my head later on that I had paid. I sat for ages taking pictures of my cup of tea and finally left thinking that I had paid. I looked around to say goodbye to the young gentleman who had served me but he was not at the counter and the other young man was engrossed in the corner with something so I just walked out. I went a couple of steps down to a fab takeaway shop where I occasionally buy half a rotisserie chicken for supper. As I got outside the young gentleman from the cafe was standing outside waiting for me and I smiled and said hello and then he asked me if I had paid! I blinked a couple of times in shock, I think, and then it slowly dawned on me that in fact I had not. I apologised profusely and he was very understanding.

So I just want to thank him for the dignified and gracious way in which he approached me as such an event is mortifying! I do so hope I have the courage to visit the cafe again because it really is a lovely little haven to have a drink and I often pass it on my way home. It is well worth a visit!

So today is a picture of the beautiful little flower that emerges from your ball of tea. Only the border is in iColorama otherwise the entire picture was edited in Snapseed, an app which is even better now with the new features. The photo was taken with VividHDR.

This second picture was taken with Camera+and also edited in Snapseed

 

This final picture was taken in Hipstamatic with no editing

Day 112 of 365 Day Challenge

I went on a fabulous boat trip from Sai Kung today with my 'Golden Girls'. A lovely day leisurely talking, laughing, eating and swimming. You could not wish for more.

This next picture shows the boat coming back to the harbour.  Manipulated in Snapseed and PaintCan, it pretty much sums up the day - relaxing, good company.

Day 111 of 365 Day Challenge

I went with a friend to the Asian Society today chiefly to see the historical buildings which make up part of the site. These buildings are the Old Victoria Barracks which is a former explosives magazine. Within the complex there are four old military buildings built in the mid-nineteenth century for the production and storage of ammunition and explosives.

So today's photo is an old lantern perched in one of the buildings manipulated in iColorama, Superimpose and Stackables.

Day 105 of 365 Day Challenge

I met a friend today to plan a trip into Shenzhen, China, next week and at the same time decided to go to Sham Shui Po to see if I could find some sewing bits and pieces for a hat I'm making and also to see if they had any hats I liked anyway. I've got a small head and find it very frustrating getting a hat.

Anyhow, Sham Shui Po is fascinating. There are three main roads of shops or street stalls that just sell buttons or beads or lace or fabric or leather bag making supplies not to mention electronic stuff. The first time you go it's really quite overwhelming and it's easy to get lost and go backwards and forwards along the same road because all the shops seem to look the same. Everytime I go into a shop and come out again I don't seem to remember from which way I entered and end up going back down the road I have just come up. I usually have a good sense of direction but here it just goes straight out of the window. However, this is my fourth visit and I think I am at last getting a feel for where everything is. It's important that if you find a shop you like you take a card and write down what you saw there otherwise you may never find it again or remember why you took the card!

Up to now it is amazing with all the supplies that I often come back empty handed but now I have started to get more methodical. Language is sometimes a problem so you have to be prepared to go into a shop and search it from top to bottom. I come back from a visit here absolutely knackered.

It's better for sewing accessories than fabric itself unless you want to buy a lot. There are tons of shops with swatches but you have to order the fabric and you need to purchase quite a lot of metres so it doesn't serve my purpose. There are some street stalls with fabrics but none as nice as the fabrics I can get home in Surrey and London.

So today's picture is a picture of some of the rolls of sewing tape you can buy and then a picture of a typical ribbon and lace shop. Taken with Hipstamatic (Helga Viking + Kodot Grizzed) on the iPhone 6

Day 104 of 365 Day Challenge

I had to go into Central Hong Kong today to do some shopping and decided to pop into my favourite little French restaurant, Les Fils à Maman, for a light lunch. It's down a small allleyway off Hollywood road near the PMQ and for me it's a lovely little rest stop. It's in a square and today there were some Chinese men playing a game with stick cards. Further on is some cheeky graffitti on the wall and this is today's picture.

Taken with Hipstamatic (Helga Viking + Kodot XGrizzled) with a slight tune up in Snapseed.

Day 102 of 365 Day Challenge

We went out for a walk today along Bowen Road which is famous in Hong Kong for its joggers and dog walkers because part of it is a leafy, flat custom made joggers/walking track. I have my iphone with me but there are not a lot of flowers here so it's a case of either getting a picture of a good view or a good one of people and their dogs. However I actually did find a pile of fallen dead flowers which I thought would make an interesting photo. When I got it home I realised that it looked pretty dire and my other pictures weren't up to much so I decided I would have to use it. So here is the final result followed by the original picture.

So to clean it up I loaded it into SketchClub and outlined the flowers in white on another layer using the sketch pen. On another layer beneath this I coloured in the blackened parts of the flowers with either green or red.

I saved this and then took it into Brushstrokes to find a painterly effect that would make the whole picture more consistently like a painting.  I also tried Glazed an example of which is below.

Day 98 of 365 Day Challenge

For people who don't know, Hong Kong has hundreds of fabulous walks and hiking is very popular.

So today I went on a hike with 7 other ladies in the Sai Kung East Country Park. This to me is one the prettiest walks I have done in Hong Kong displaying beautiful coastlines of spectacular rock formations which makes up what is called Hong Kong's Geopark.

Today's picture is one of the natural rock faces which makes this area so special. Weathering has caused this volcanic rock to form hexagonal columns.

Here are two more pictures showing the beautiful coastline and beaches:

Day 91 of 365 Day Challenge

I went hiking today with 9 of my friends around the Aberdeen Reservoir in Hong Kong. It was a lovely day and a very enjoyable stroll catching up with everybody and enjoying the countryside and watching the black kites circling around.

There is lots of dense bush and not many flowers but towards the end of the walk I managed to get a couple of shots of little flowers, so today's picture is yet another flower and below that are some shots of the reservoir and the view. The flower was taken with the Hipstamatic app and the others with a new HDR camera app that I am testing. I set the highlights quite low for the latter shots because it was a very hazy with a sharp light so they have come out perhaps a little dark but I was very pleased with the results considering the harsh light and it is easier to lighten them later than make them darker.

Day 90 of 365 Day Challenge

This week really has been a week of flowers and the city. I was back in Central Hong Kong again and wondering about today's picture when I passed a shop opening it's doors for the first time today (shops change in Hong Kong like people change their underwear!). When a new shop opens there are always a bunch of massive flower arrangements outside the door from various organisations congratulating the shop on it's new venture. I smile because hey, photo opportunity.

So today is yet another flower. The decision is then, do I photograph the flower with Hipstamatic and leave it as it is or do I pimp it up in one of the fabulous apps I have on my iPhone?

Well, I can't resist can I?! So I thought I would take you through the process I went through.  Here is the final result:

So I started off with the original flower that I took using Hipstamatic (Helga Viking lens with Kodot XGrizzed Film):

I decide to take it into Stackables to grunge it up a bit. I touch the star formulas button and the first one is Happiness and I rather like the metallic quality that it produces and wonder what this would look like blended back with the original.

So I take the original into the iColorama app and then choose Effects>Blend and then for Photo choose the Stackables version above to blend with the original. Going through the presets Negation looks interesting. I turn down the Feature opacity to about 70% and apply it. Then I decide to vamp it up slightly be going to Adjust>Vibrance and upping the Vibrance slightly. I save it and this is the result:

I want to accentuate the flower more so I take this version and choose Style>Edges>5 with maximum size to get a black and white outline. I apply this and then go to Style>Coherence>5 to give it a smoother look. The final result is this:

Now to blend the last two together. So in iColorama I bring in the colour version, choose Effects>Blend and then using the preset Multiply, I blend them together to get this:

It's a little bit dark so I decide to lighten it just a tad in Snapseed using the Tune Up option.  Here is the result:

But when I compare it with the original I see that the lovely bright yellow stamens are dark so I have a brainwave. I take the original into Superimpose as a background, I bring in the above version as a foreground and I zoom in really close and mask out the black stamens so that the yellow shows through and Voila, I have what I want which is the first picture.

Here is a picture of all the large flower arrangements outside the store:

Day 89 of 362 Day Challenge

Was in Central Hong Kong today to meet friends and decided to stop by Exchange Square to take some photos because the reflective surfaces there are fantastic. Lucky me, there is a new art installation there at the moment so got this interesting picture:

Day 83 of 365 Day Challenge

I'm still playing around with my iPhone 6 telephoto lens and took a picture of a little sparrow.  It wasn't entirely focussed so I took it into SketchClub and traced the edges in black. Once I had done this I took the picture into Repix and posterised it. Then I took a texture of mine into iColorama and used the Brushes>Artist option to make a painterly background. I then used this as a background and used Brushes>Bound to bring in the bird and then the background at a lower opacity. I textured it slightly in Stackables and then back into iColorama to add a border.

Day 82 of 365 Day Challenge

I bought myself a a no-name brand x12 telephoto lens for my iPhone 6 and had my first opportunity to use it today. I didn't have huge expectations of it but I have been hankering after one for a while and it is not always easy to get top quality iPhone accessories in Hong Kong unless they are produced by Apple.

I was down by the City Hall and opposite they have some massive tents up for an exhibition. There were men harnessed to the tops getting ready to give it a wash. So I set up my little tripod which comes with the lens and iphone cover and took a couple of pics. I found it quite difficult to get the focus right on the lens at such a distance. My eyesight isn't the best anymore and I perhaps needed some reading glasses to do it better. I also took some pictures of the tents without the lens and in the end I choose the picture that was taken at a distance as the composition was better. The telephoto lens brought the subjects in just a fraction too close so I couldn't get the whole tent top in as well as the man on the harness. Anyhow I have included both.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Enlighten, Stackables (Repix instead of Stackables for the second picture)

Day 81 of 365 Day Challenge

I have been messing around with the new Enlighten app which is supposed to be an all round photo editor on the iPhone (later to be introduced on the iPad). I like it as a possible competitor to Snapseed but without layers and good selection tools it still doesn't fulfil the 'all-round' category for me. However, it does have some neat options that aren't available elsewhere.

Photo taken with Hipstamatic and manipulated in Enlighten:

Day 80 of 365 Day Challenge

I have a friend staying with me at the moment and we went to the Tai O fishing village. As we were walking amongst the stilted houses, I managed to get a picture of an old Chinese lady and when I got home I thought, well I'll be it looks like exactly the same lady that I took a picture of in July LAST year when we visited the village for the first time. I know it's the same place, but I'm sorry that's uncanny. Here is this year's and I have included the shot from last year.

So here are two shots of the lady from this year, taken with Hipstamatic and manipulated with Enlighten, a new all round app that has just come out on the iPhone:

 

Last year's picture

Day 79 of 365 Day Challenge

I'm back in Hong Kong and took my friend to see the Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Gardens. I find the Nunnery and Gardens very peaceful and it was a relaxing visit.  Here is a picture of the Pavilion of Absolute Perfection in the middle of the gardens.

Apps: Hipstamatic, Retouch, Stackables, Snapseed

Day 72 of 365 Day Challenge

I took a friend from the UK to Sham Shui Po market today. It's a fascinating place full of little stalls which specialise in particular items. For example there is one stall that just sells second hand remote controls and another that sells second hand drills. The streets too are specialised with one street full of fabric and another dedicated to beads and buttons. The food markets are particularly interesting with some of the meat and fish stalls probably not suitable for the squeamish.

You also see some interesting characters there so this is today's picture. A old man in traditional old dress. It was taken with Hipstamatic and altered using Snapseed, Superimpose, iColorama and the grungework was done in Stackables.