Redecorating a place for my smallest camera(s)

My android phone started to complain about lack of space  a while back. I had been putting off deleting things when It ran out of battery (thanks to leaving the gps on). Once it was charged and restarted all the screens including the home screen had been reset to the factor defaults. Everything else was there including recent photos, so I’m not sure what happened. Anyway it was a chance to rearrange the screens and particularly my photo tools, which had become over-crowded (perhaps 7 different cameras is to much?). So I rearranged things mainly removing viewers altogether, with drop box, tumblr and flickr going to a separate page. I did mull over google photos, because I haven’t been using it for some time now but with the demise of picasa I may have to. The simple little cameras Camera 51 and Open Camera are getting more use, I like the simplistically of the open camera GUI, and the leveling aid that can be displayed on the screen is a great idea. Another goto favorite now is QuickPic, its simple, fast and shares with everything I need. I haven’t joined the free CM Cloud space (yet) so the tile asking me too is starting to feel like nagging. But once again I might have to find an alternate on-line “cloud” space, so I’ll tolerate the silent reminder a little longer.

Six months ago I playfully suggested I was having a race between google photos and flickr in a contest to see who could manage my phone phones. It was a real tortoise and hare epic but in reality Dropbox actually won. It remains my preferred method of uploading and backing up from the phone (because its simple, reliable and no wire have to be involved) but I also like the flickr app both to view photos on my phone and upload new ones. Its no fuss and does wait long enough for me to cull the bad images (it like Drop box only works when I have WiFI access, it is also polite and seems to always let dropbox go first). Importantly both dropbox and flickr load the photos as private. If I want to share drop box is my first choice because I just need to email a link  (the recipient doesn’t have to have drop box). Thus I don’t see an urgent need to embrace google photos on my android phone just yet.

And the winners is...

Whilst Google photos and flickr are slogging their way along, vying to be first to upload any image from my phone, I realised that there are already two clear winners in this race and its not the tortoise or the hare. First is Dropbox, which I have reinstated (I suspect it might have been nobbled by either google backup or flickr's uploadr but it did have a significant app update around the same time, so I haven't notified the stewards yet!). I didn't find carousel so useful but dropbox is really simple, solid and still has the very logical private sharing options. I could live without it but I love the reliability of knowing soon after I find a WiFi spot my phone images are up on a private cloud (flickr could safely substitute here). The second is a surprise, its QuickPic, an alternative to the native gallery app or Google Photos itself. Compared with Google Photos its a real lightweight with a tiny memory footprint but its fast and does exactly what I expect from a photo gallery app. More importantly it plays nicely with other phone apps.

Whilst the other race is still on, flickr is becoming my favourite as a stayer.

And the race is on

The new apps on my phone are all busy trying to upload every image that I collect, soon after I photograph or collect it.  At the same time drop box, upon which had to began to rely to upload new phone photos whenever I have WiFi access, seems to be falling behind.

The new andoid google photos app seems to have infiltrated several other apps on my phone, including the native android camera and gallery apps.  Despite the fact I had turned off its predecessor desire to upload, it is happily vacuuming up any new graphic images and posting them to google photos whenever a WiFi connection is available (at least it remembered this part of my settings). Otherwise it seems harmless.

The new android flickr app has also taken upon itself to upload photos from a phone.  However it is probably more polite in doing this.  It seems to only upload from a limited number of directories, specifically once used by my camera apps.  Further doesn't rush to upload new photos, I have the feeling it trickles them up.  Only when I am specifically looking at new photos in the flickr app does it upload things.

So in the race to grab all of my images it appears to be a rabbit and tortoise affair.  I like fables and therefore have decided to let the race continue for a month or so, providing I can see its not going to end in tears.  The vast majority of my phone photos are unimportant anyway so I don't want to flood my “social media” presences with such mundan-ity.  So fingers crossed and let's see where this goes.

There is a big difference in what I see on-line of this race to collect everything.  The tortoise may be doing better here.  All the photos are being flooded up into the clouds are private, which is good.  Many are being automatically tagged with the most common subject tags, also good.  They are displayed in my camera roll in date order, importantly with the small padlock icon to indicate that they are private, very good.  It is a relatively simple matter to click on a specific photo and the click on the two arrows icon in the upper right to display the photo page. Then under the heading additional info the first line is viewing this photo and you are able to select from appalled and list from private through family and friends to public, for public photos you will see the padlock icon change to an eye, beside which will be displayed the number of views of the photo.

In comparison the rabbit, the google photos web view is a bit more brash. The icon are larger, the layout is still a time line (rather than albums). What is missing is any indication of weather the photos are private or public. In fact I can’t find anywhere in the google photos view that can assure me they are private. Not good enough! I’m pretty sure they are private and will remain so until you share them, but I can not confirm that at the moment So whose the bunny here?

Once were wetlands. (An Unusual Round Trip)

Pawn/fish farms and palm oil plantations are replacing mangroves and salt marsh at an unprecedented rate. 

This photo has had an interesting voyage around cloud computing (unintentionally). First I was investigating the updated google photo app, and eventually got to see my on-line photos again. In the meantime when I was in Singapore google autoback must have vacuumed up all the photo I had taken that day, when I put my camera card in my laptop while checking my email and attempting to blog. So I was looking at the jpeg version of the photos, thinking what the?, and wanted to straighten this one. Turns out the edit features are no longer snapseed they are a simplified set of basic tools (without a straighten tool), A lame set of colour filters and a cropping tool (ok that can wiggle the image from left to right). Bit of a disappointment really. However tucked away in the options (just on the android app) is the option to edit the photo in snapseed, so I did and played a bit (eg adding the borders) and I saved that on my phone. In the meantime my flickr app had updated (and even though I had previously turned off the automatic upload) it to vacuumed up my phone images (including the edited photo above) and posted to flickr (albeit privately). I kind of liked it and it tells an important story so I changed it to public. Even better I could paste the link to the photo here in blogger.

So what is the important story it tells. I am working on a new art project I have begun to call "The Veil of Gaia", and I want to illustrate the beautiful analogy of James Lovelock of various earth systems as a force to protect life itself. He suggest rainforests are like her lungs, but we are tearing those down at a great rate, which must make it much harder for her to recover. Rivers are her circulatory system and particularly wetlands act like her renal system purifying her vital waters, but we are now slicing those apart too. This must be making her very sick indeed and her task of keeping the earth suitable for all forms of life is going to get more difficult for her.

Last of Autumn Start of Winter

This was taken with my new android phone during a break in the rain. It was taken using HDR Camera+ and then lightly adjusted to soften the colour a square crop and add the ragged frame using Adobe’s Photoshop Express for Android. Photoshop express was one of the early photo editor apps I used on my previous Android phone so I am roughly familiar with its basic operation. By the way the controls are nothing like other adobe photo editors, At first impressions it has more in the common format of small filter icons to pick the effect you want from a scrollable ribbon underneath the phone giving the impression of a one-click fix. However if you look a bit deeper on the icon on the bottom line there are a number of useful tools for basic edit. The key is the several filters can be used cumulatively on the one image. The first three overlapping circle control cropping tool, which bring up the filters related to colour with a horizontal slider bar to increase of decrease the effect. Next is a small icon with two overlapping l shapes which is the cropping took. Then a simplified icon of two sliders to control exposure, and many tonal and sharpening/noise options. The eye is for red eye reduction and the small frame icon is for adding a frame or fancy edge. Finally there is a band aid to remove blemishes. All in all most of the edit tools you might want to use.

Cameraphone :: One Phone 3 Cameras

   

I have a new phone an LG Android and the review’s seem to can it as very ordinary but to me it is s reasonably decent camera to have always in my pocket. Specifically to get simple snaps and collect reference material for my sketching.

One thing that many people don’t realise you are not locked into the supplied camera app that came with your phone. There are dozen of good camera enhancements out there.

Pudding Camera gets some favourable reviews and has a simple and easy to use controls, the special feature is you can choose the style of camera you wish to use (the above left photo) is Basic Camera with a vintage look.. I’m still experiment with this one but being able to see the final effect before you take a photo is great.

HDR Camera+ was a favourite back on my HTC wildfire, it takes three exposures and then creates a HDR image, all processed on the phone and it has a range of tone mapping in the form of little filter style icons. I still like it (centre image above)

A Better Camera, is another camera app from Almalence who create HDR camera+, for a small cost you can get am impressive array of extra controls for your camera, akin to the controls available on most Bigger DSLR Cameras. They are on a pull down icon menu but easy to learn and navigate. For me its bihggest benefit is that it does produce clearer and more vivid images (see the image on the right above), with the DRO (Dynamic Range Optimization) option set. This is a propriety technique similar to tone mapping that seeks to make the camera see like the human eye!

Me!bourne By Night by Phone

I tried out a little experiment as I was in the city to go the princes theatre to see “The King & I” which was a great production. Anyway on the way the wet city streets begged to be photographed but I only had my phone. So I took a couple of  photos with HDR Camera+. Next as I waited for the train home I played the Pixlr app creative filters to make the image on the right and then I created a blog post, using a Blogger android app, expecting to be able to utilize the WiFi at the station. However after a lot of non action and spinner on the screen I eventually got a message that the server wasn’t available. However when I got home the photos where already on my Dropbox recent uploads, so dropbox worked just fine.

 

 

HDR Camera+ 2,  Dropbox 2,  Pixlr 1,  def Android/Google Blogger 0

finding a surprise (or two) within Melbourne Now

rory hyde’s bin dome

I was visiting the Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. I could not help noticing rory hyde’s bin dome, part of Melborne Now, an ambitious exhibition covering many, probably too many, contemporary Melbourne based artists. The dome is made of the type of waste paper bins you can buy from ikea and today the bins sported grasses and bromeliads. It is wonderfully positioned in the entry hall and beautifully lit with natural light from the high open ceiling. The video and HDR image were all taken on my humble HTC Wildfire (android phone)
I can definitely recommend the Edward Steichen exhibition but other than the dome I’m not sure I’m that inspired to track down the rest of Melbourne Now. For those that like a puzzle can you find the location of the photo below?
 
HINT ::: It may not be an actual exhibit!

simpler HDR on my phone

 

Continuing on with the HDR theme, which seems to be this week sub-plot. I was out walk (unusually without my DSLR) and notice an interesting cloud formation. Of Course I had my phone, A normal exposure would be ok but I guess an extended dynamic range HDR  might be better. So I used my HDR Camera app, which has been changed a little lately. It still takes and processes the three bracketed images on the phone, and has the big advantage that you don’t have to keep the phone exactly steady and it now has the more common interface where you pick the look & tone mapping from small thumbnails  I like the natural tone mapping but sometimes I might do light tweaks to the exposure and colour vividness. It still does this on the phone, so you can cross reference back to what you are actually seeing.

 

I’m sure there are a lot of HDR apps out there now, Yet for those, such as an artist, who might like to capture difficult subjects straight onto the phone as close to what they are seeing as possible, and check, doing everything on the phone is a big bonus. More traditional HDR approach are normally carried out some time later under different lighting and colour context so it can become a little more challenging to get the “feel” of the colours

More Street Art

Richmond is probably most famous for its hard edge street art (aka graffiti covered in tags), but I found this sculpture wall and reflective space on the very busy corner of Bridge & Punt Rd.

Yet another example of a Smartphone photo taken and synced via dropbox before I even got home (no Instagram involved)

Interesting Lighting

interesting lighting, originally uploaded by imageo.
This was an experimenting with flickr's new mobile app in conjunction with the share facility on android, to both post to flickr & blogger at the same time. It certainly uploaded the photo easily, and posted the blog post but I had my phone in landscape orientation and the uploaded photo was rotated 90 degrees to what I actually wanted (on my phone I just rotated it naturalyl so I wasn't aware of this)

A dark sky, a gap in the clouds and strong side lighting does make for very interesting photos, even of a shopping center car park! I unusually didn't have either of my DSLR's handy but HDR Camera+ on my phone did a nice job and let me test out the new flickr app.

Two great Android Camera Apps on Sale

I just happened to notice, I was looking for a light meter app, that two great Android Phone apps are on sale today. Not sure how long that 40% off sale will last, but you’ll get both for a fraction over $5.00, which is great value. HDR Camera + is a real favourite of mine, and takes three exposures and produces a tonemapped image with just a single click. This does translate into vivid colours and rich detail, as claimed, albeit with a little bit of practice. Camera ZOOM FX is a really popular app offering both nice slick standard camera features, and lots of fancy filters but also timer, burst mode & time lapse as well a shoot stabilizer feature. The Tap on the Screen feature to take the photo makes it incredibly easy to use. If you aspire to take better photos with your phone I strongly suggest you buy one or both of these, and be surprise how good you really are at photography on your phone.

The Camera Zoom Fx video on YouTube does a better introduction on how simple it is to use than me.

There are “free” version of both apps if you need to try before you buy.

Why I’ve deleted the Google+ app from my phone

I have been a little uneasy with the changes to Google accounts and particularly the way photos get shared when you post them in Google+. I was quiet a fan of Picasa and Picasa Web Albums but now I am less so and in fact worried enough not to post family photos on using Google+ any more. For a while I just stepped back and watched what was happening. Well very little has happened and a couple of the features I had liked have tarnished a little (at least for me). It is now time to reassess. So reluctantly I am deleting my Google+ app from my phone and whilst I will keep my Google+ account I doubt I will be using it to post photos much any more.

1. I never really connected with the “phenomenal growth” photo community on Google+, despite joining a number of great photographic circles. What I actually saw was a lot of follow the leader copy cat stuff. There were some innovative and different things but they where quickly everywhere, hundreds of them with thousands of comments like “wow” and “great shot” this quickly dulled the very reason to even look, it was just always more of the same. Of course some of the photographers, like +Thomas Hawk, and +Trey Radcliffe just to mention a couple, are still great, producing great work, I just think they have gotten lost in the “look at me” "wanna bees” that post incessantly.
2. The way you can control how your photos are shared has changed, in Picasa Web you had several options (not unlike flickr) for family and friends as well as sharing by individual emails invitations. Under the Google+ changes you might be surprised to find out that as soon as you share on Google+, that goes to your home page AND the home page of anyone in the circles you share with. Their friends will be able to read (and repost links to) your photos. This is really just the same as the problem as in facebook that has caught out so many celebrities (who have discovered to late that the gossip mags have just publish some private and perhaps less than flattering snaps just meant for their friends).
3. The Google+ View (aka lightbox), which is a very nice clean format, actually doesn’t have details of how you wish to licence your photo (whereas Picasa Web did). Not being able to display a creative commons licence is a spoiler for me and I have posted very few photos to be share publically on Google+ since I realised this.
4. Instant Upload, which seemed to be a very nice feature and used to work well on my phone no longer worked in the updated, oversized and blotted Google+ app (15,45MB), that auto update delivered itself to me one night. Checking the fine print I have found that instant upload no longer works for android version 2.1 (which my Telstra wildfire is locked to).  I can not see anyway to go back a version on the app, so this was really the deal breaker.

Not the only one

With all the whoha! about the purchase of instagram by Facebook, you might get the impression that it is the only photo sharing option for mobile phones. That is not true there are plenty other and many of them give you even more features & options. Instagram is however clearly popular, and especially so on iPhones (there is an android version, see grey button here). The beauty of the system is its simplicity, once you have taken your photo you choose and “filters” to modify it (rather than having to learn new editing tools, you scroll across a set of pictures,with strange names, and pick the images that looks like the edit you want to do), you can add a caption and then finally you “share it”, either by email or to one of Twitter, Flickr or Facebook.

Maybe I’m wanting to be too creative but unlike flickr (which still shows heaps of originality and clever use of photographic methods). the instagram site is very much a “me-too” copy copy place where everything looks the same and the fashion for the latest look and filter last just a day or so. I did download Instagram and tested it out but soon removed it to make room for different photo apps on my wildfire, which isn’t over endowed with spare memory.. Obviously a lot of people want to be part of the hottest newest thing, but please don’t stop there. Here are a few more web & phone apps that might just make you mobile phone photos just as nice or even nicer and be equally as simple to use as instagram.

The best place to start , now that there is no longer any place to Picnik. is Aviary. Aviary is well established as a series of web base photo editing tools. Its big power is that Aviary editors are embeddable, and can be added to any website or mobile app with just a few lines of code. Flickr have switched their popular picnic action over to Aviary without a hitch. Its auto Enhance filter is truely amazing and will add punch to almost any mobile phone snap. It also supports facebook uploads and direct edits. The downside is there is currently no instagram like app to download to your phone, but plenty of other apps have aviary editing functionality already, expect more.

Yes i am actually recommending a photoshop application!. This one is free on android phones and is just as easy to use as Instagram, ok it doesn’t have as many filters, but its simple editing tools (crop,,exposure, tint, contrast, saturation & brightness) are really nice finger controlled sliders. There are some fancier features, like soft focus, special “effect” filters and borders. The sharing is just via email Facebook & TwitPic, and the ability to upload to a personal photo library at Photoshop.com.

If you want to play on the more fun and perhaps cheesy side then have a look at these.

Photofunia, is an app from a popular web based service that allows you to do some amazing photo montages, with particular emphasis on the funny face approach, getting your head on a billboard, stamp or art work. It magically finds any face and seamlessly inserts it is many many, templates. This is a FUN app, but it does take time to upload your photo to be processed on-line.

These last couple of apps actually do the special effect “live” so you can see the effect on the screen before you create the final effect when you press the shutter.

Camera Fun Free, there is also Pro version, was probably one early “live” photo phone applications, and I certainly have had a lot of fun with mine. An Alternative is  Cartoon Camera, there is also an ad free Pro version, which is perhaps a little cooler (it describes itself this way) and more cartoonish, drawing and sketching like.

PhotoProject :: Urban Abstract

Into the daylight. Taken with an android camera phone.

For PhotoFriday's topic inner city

Blue with an Australian Summer Intensity

Summer is arriving at last, the hot weather part, and the sky has cleared to its intense blueness. This blue is not that easy to capture with a camera, especially a cameraphone. The problem being, for most of the day in Australia the clear sky will bleach out to white (being the highest intensity light (according to your light meter, when it compares the light to the foreground objects). There are some well established ways to get around this.

1. Use a polarizing filter, works well but these filters can be expensive
2. Expose for the sky, Point the camera high in the sky and half press the shutter release (this performs the exposure and auto-focus on most new digital cameras, set to green or Auto mode). Then pan down to your preferred picture view and press the shutter button all the way down. This keeps the exposure setting of the sky but on your new phone. Most probably you will have a nice sky but the foreground will be blocked out very dark, with little detail. Such dark silhouette can be dramatic but you probably wont be able to tell Arthur from Martha.
3. Use the HDR process to extend the dynamic range of your photo. If you look back through my post you will find this requires taking several exposure of the same image and then post processing these (using special software)

This photo series was taken at 3pm (2pm without daylight saving and about 7 hours before sunset) using the updated HDRCamera app on my android phone. The beauty of this application is that it automatically undertakes the post processing in your smart phone. Ok it does take a while, but the results are usually great, this image for example does captured that warmth and  intense of our summer sky nicely without making a silhouette of the gun tree.

There is always someone

Have you noticed that just as you set up a shot and press the button someone is likely to wander across your photo and cast an awkward shadow of even block out part of your subject? For conventional HDRi\ this can be a disaster, or a lot of cropping. These where taken with my android phone using HDR Camera, which has a “feature” that it uses the first photo as a reference and other items in a single frame only will be removed, rather than included as a ghost. Not sure how its done but it does take some stress away.
I took this photo series of a decorated CFA van to test a theory I have that HDRi is a good technique for the harsh Australian summer midday sun. With a single exposure they best I would have expected was a bleached out sky and the silhouette of the white van (blown out with no detail) against the background trees dark in shadow.
PS: If you want to get the “official” CFA/DSE Bush Fire warnings and alerts on your smartphone for this sumer visit this link.

Icy Christmas Decorations in Summer

 
The Glen Shopping Center at Glen Waverley has a wonderful glass dome and vaulted glass roof, letting in beautiful natural light to the otherwise artificial temple to the gods of everything commercial. The Juxtaposition of stylized snow flakes against a rich blue summer sky is an irony I appreciate. Its a pity more Christmas shoppers don’t look up.

Still elegant

This is the back door of the Royal Exhibition Building. This grand old lady, was only meant to be a temporary structure for the “great” Melbourne international Exhibition in 1880, Victoria was still an English colony back then, with newly acquired wealth thanks to the Gold Rush. The building has survived a few partial demolitions and fires, and has now passed into the hands of the Victorian museum and is also now  a listed World Heritage site. She still hold exhibitions and has had many other uses including the opening of the first Australian Parliament (just the opening!) , a sports venue during the 1956 Olympics and as the main Matriculation examination hall (which I remember all to well) during the 56s 60s & 70s and still used by Melbourne Uni and RMIT for exams (also remember these). Today her biggest event is the Melbourne International flower and garden show.

The stark/strong lighting of the Australian summer gives me another good test for HDR camera on my android phone. 

Getting in very close

Whilst this fish has featured prominently in my rock art, this is the first time I had seen a real version (aka a fossil in a mueseun collection). The lighting was very low and the specimen small but I thought HDR Camera on my android phone might be ok,


And it was. You would think he was over 70 million years old?