FitBit Stride Length Calculator

Are you a FitBitter like me? Did you get one of these little gadgets for Christmas? There is also a wristband version called Fitbit Flex. I got a FitBit One for myself for my birthday last year so I've now had it for a few months. One thing I have learned since wearing this gadget is the importance of stride length. When I went to input the number though, I wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly. I found this cool calculator widget and I thought I'd share it with you. I hope you find this as helpful as I have. I believe wearable tech will grow to be a bigger hit in the coming years.

Are you hooked up yet?

Click this link if the hosted graphic doesn't load below: Stride Length Calculator

Evening, Javelina!

All this time living in Arizona, I have never seen Javelina up close, until now. I was leaving a client’s home Thursday night and it was around 7:45 pm. I was accelerating up a small hill when I had to hit the hooks as they were just congregating in the middle of the road! They scurried up the side of the road and continued their little meeting and I just had to stop the car and marvel at them. It was really hard to photograph what I was seeing with just my iPhone. It didn’t help that I was kinda of scared that they might charge me or that a car could come up behind me at any time. Instinct told me I should not get out of the car, but I admit I was very tempted! I decided they were a safe enough distance away from my car, so I took a deep breath, picked up my iPhone with one hand while rolling down my electric window and keeping my finger on that window button, my left foot on the clutch, right on the break, paused the podcast I was playing, brought up the camera, enabled the flash while trying to reach up with my thumb to tap the screen in an attempt at focusing on the peccary then snapped 2 photos. The super bright flash from my LED flash startled them and they began scurrying away. The photos I captured were pitch black and I was disappointed that I couldn’t capture the moment. I rolled up my window, put the phone back in my dash, engaged in first gear and slowly drove off in amazement of having witnessed these nocturnal animals. I was glad I got to see them with my own eyes.

While organizing my photos for this evening, I decided instead of discarding these back blobs that I’d try and edit them in iPhoto. It turns out I was able to get something out of one of them and as you can see here, you can almost make out the shapes of the Javelina. You can make out 3 or 4 of them in the shadows.

This is what I absolutely love about smartphone photography: the thrill of the moment. Your heart beats in your chest and you feel alive in the moment.

So many times I feel guilty because I am always snapping photos of every little thing. “Melissa, how can you be present in the moment when you’re always behind the camera?” Well, maybe everyone’s way of being present is just not the same. I felt very much alive trying to capture this moment. Not only was I present then, but I can recall that moment now any time I like and feel a sense of pride. Is this not being present in the moment?

Smartphone Photographers Point and Shoot Weekend Edition for 11-23-2013

Check out this lively discussion on sharing your photos online. We discuss apps, services and philosophies along with tips for integrating them with your photo sharing needs.

Clumsy Ninja!

Yesss!! Clumsy Ninja is finally out! I have been looking forward to this game! Are you playing it yet? Download it FREE here!

Smartphone Photographers Community Hangout for November 21, 2013

This was another fun Hangout On Air with the Smartphone Photographers Community.
(That link will take you to the Google Plus page until there is a more official link which I'll update if that happens!)

If you click this link it will take you to the part where we discuss my "Butterfly Kiss" photo at the 36 minute mark. (Otherwise watch the show from the start below.) I had fun talking discussing this photo and the other suggestions that were made sound like another cool challenge for me to try! I really enjoyed learning about High-key photography technique from Michael Sweeney and I'm looking forward to trying out the effect.

An iPhone app called FX Photo Studio was discussed and I wanted to let you know it's on sale at the time of this posting so go grab it because it looks like a winner. I haven't yet had a chance to play with it, but it's got lots of recommendations so far. There is also an HD iPad version:


What do you think of smartphone photography? Come join us sometime.

Here is the "Butterfly Kisses" image I posted. I have several more eye images I'm working on and I'll post more once I process them. You have heard of a butterfly kiss, right?

Have Fun

Children remind us of what is simple and most important in life: have fun, the rest will follow.

Playing With The Sun

A play on words and a play on, well, play. There is this awkward time on certain days of the week in between errands and appointments, specifically about an hour before I need to go pick up Lucian from school where it's not enough time to nap or really go anywhere, so on this beautiful fall day, Keagan and I got on the floor to play. We had some little squirt guns that had been gifted to the boys over the summer. Normally I don't allow them in the house, but Keagan was being impossibly cute with the asking so I caved. I figured I could at least have some fun with it if I set some ground rules about where he was allowed to squirt the water. I set up some little targets for him to aim at and as I was showing him how to shoot the targets, the sun was coming through with such intensity so, I decided to do some shooting of my own with my iPhone 5s — also my idea of a good time. I was able to catch a rainbow AND lens flare in one shot and I'm really pleased with the results. The only editing I did was in iPhoto; just some cropping and a little bit of bumping up the contrast on this first shot. I played with some other effects in the other two shots as the challenge was all that sunlight with which to work.

I love all of the elements in this shot: lines, curves, curls, shadows, rainbows, sun rays, color, highlights, the way my son's little lips are formed while he's making little sounds or thinking about where to aim.

Playing With The Sun 

Target Practice

At this time I am reminded of a newspaper clipping photo I once saw of my Grandfather as a middle school-aged child shooting a rifle at target practice during a class. I believe he was in some type of rotary gun club at school in the 1930s. Upon seeing that photo is was no wonder he later became a sharpshooter for the military during WWII. It's hard to imagine that there was ever a time when guns were in schools as a source of education if perhaps some sort of early military inculcation. 

This day, however, I chose to set those negative thoughts aside in order to have some simple fun with my son and some plastic toys that shoot water. He is innocent and unaware, just having a good time knocking little bottles and medicine cups off of triangles with water and studying the trajectory. I am not innocent, but somehow I managed to have fun with this time all the same.

Spritz