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October 9, 2011

Of Cemeteries, Apps, and Photo Contests

This week, I'm up on Whidbey Island. (You can read my love letter here, to see what's so dang special about this place.)

And this fabulous, golden-autumned Sunday afternoon, I hung out in one of my favorite haunts for wandering and pondering. And photographing.

That's right: a cemetery. Today, Sunnyside Cemetery in Coupeville.

Especially in the fall, the pull of cemeteries is strong. Halloween. The Day of the Dead. The art of old graveyards calls out. All of those headstones, askew on the earth, with fading names and dates intended to memorialize lives that faded away even longer ago. Tall trees meant to stand guard and give quiet solace instead uproot the flat earth. Marble and granite dissolve away, while leaves and roots grow on. Growth and decay, side by side, always together.


IPhone in hand, I clicked photo after photo in the honey-colored afternoon light. And as has become my habit, I posted them on Twitter . . . where, to my astonishment, I immediately received back a resounding chorus of tweets from many souls who proclaimed their own fondness for cemeteries. Who knew?!?!?!


This fall, I've become more and more enamored of photographing daily life on my iPhone and sending it out on Twitter. There are a bunch of us there doing the same. It is a gift of technology to be able to connect with each other in this way: to witness each other's artistic and creative sides . . . instantaneously, and often frequently throughout a day.


Along with this connection comes the sharing of cool creativity apps. One of which I'm going to pass along right here now, because IT IS FABULOUS!!!!



It's called "Art Camera." Where, with a tiny touch of your finger to the pad, your photo of this (here, the lovely LoveJoy Inn, where I love to stay in Coupeville):

becomes this:


or any one of another cool photos by virtue of other cool effects. Like what it would look like as a pen-and-ink drawing. Or if Edgar Degas had painted it. I'm telling you -- INSTANTANEOUSLY. With a touch to the pad. And you can click on and off as you like, and still preserve your original photo. FOR FREE.


It's this kind of thing that makes me positively giddy with the excitement of artistic possibility.


Want to know another very cool possibility?!?!?! If you like to take photos and are in the SF Bay Area Oct. 21-23, consider participating in the Mill Valley Click Off -- where you have a weekend to click photos in different categories, and a chance to win the contest. Download the application and read all about it here.



Snap your photos! Share them with us :) Thanks for playing.

1 comment:

alembic said...

It's good to know that one is not alone in finding an odd sense of contentment in the autumn light of cemeteries. Sunnyside Cemetery seems aptly named, by the looks of that photo.

 
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