iPhoneography - Skies

I am fascinated by the sky. I love how it is always changing, yet always the same. When I see the sky, I am reminded of who I am. That all these strong feelings and emotions are mere clouds inside me .. and that who I am, deep down is constantly me .. the part that is not defined by all my experiences and hurts and victories even .. the part of me that began long ago, and someday .. will travel beyond the life I have had here. I am just not the many clouds .. I am the sky.

When I started out with iPhoneography, it was all about expressing my view of the world .. my passion, my heart. And what I most spent time noting through my days .. is the sky. Hence began, many snippets of sky .. and all the stories the sky seemed to tell me.

Below is my first sky shot, edited with the Toaster Filter in Instagram. I think this was one of my first photos with Likes from strangers. I was inspired. Others could see what I was seeing.

Write your dreams in the sky .. so they cover the whole earth, and expand out into the Universe ~

I Love when there's a BLUE patch at sunSet .. it's proof that the sun is still shining it's heart out. Love's Like That. 

staRe straight into the sUn .. and feel the warmth of the uniVerse melt your cares away ... the LoVe that holds the sun in place, holds Me

The picture above is an example of how mobile photography and Instagram helps so many people focus on the little moments in life. My 4 year old suddenly exclaimed as we were driving by one cloudy day, "Look mommy .. snow!" And that's when I realised just how much the large white clouds DID look like snow. Suddenly, I saw the impossible - Snow in the Tropics. And in that moment, it was so handy to not only take the shot, but add the words and record it all in digital memory.  

When I acquired Camera+, the sky photography became richer with better resolution. However, while they look lovely here in a rectangular shape, I preferred the square shape when posting to Instagram. So the rectangles were short-lived. And the challenge became to compose rich, square sky shots.

Love cannot be contained .. the suN always sHines through even the darKest of cLouds ~

 What seems to elude me is the ability to get a good shot of the moon! Still, sometimes it's the stories I hear in the sky .. that mean more than the quality of the picture itself.

And so beGins the day ... the waNing moon of March and the rays of the sUn greeting each other .. exchanging stories that will paiNt the sky with feeLing

No Fear .. i look up when the cLouds are dark .. and find there a promise that i am LoVed

The beautiful thing with mobile photography is the ability to create collages quickly and conveniently. This was one of early sky collages .. and beautiful in it's ability to composite the changing sky at one glance. All three slices were taken at the exact spot of sky, at 5 minute intervals.

watching the sLices of sunset .. i realise that like the sKy ... i am always the same, yet never quite so ~

One morning, I decided to add a tree into the sky .. because it seemed that the trees were in fact, watching the sunrise ... and indeed they do, way before any of us humans arrive of the scene. For it means they can start breakfast going :) 

Below is the original photo and the Instagram crop that I actually posted. Sometimes, the original is far more stunning. But I feel the impact of a story-photo lessens when it is loaded as a rectangle on a square format. And so, cest la vie .. compromises. I tend to choose story over visuals, because I am essentially a photo poet more than anything else.

watercolour sunriSe ... i shall paiNt the worLd with my dReams of LoVe todaY ~ 

And so began, my foray into tree photography. For apart from the sky, my great passion in life seems to be trees. And iPhoneography brought back all my long-forgotten memories of a childhood spent with trees .. and soon, I was joyfully back in that world. What can I say? iPhoneography is truly therapeutic to the heart. 

So is sky photography popular? I've had some pretty amazing feedback, and certainly .. it makes me glad to know that I have had the opportunity to befriend other skylovers :)