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During 2018 I used three cameras: A Canon G9 X, an iPhone SE and an iPhone XR. My iPhone SE served me well the last few years, but I had to replace it in the fall of 2018 because of a defective part (charge port/microphone) and I decided to go with the iPhone XR, which has an excellent camera.
The pictures that I selected for my 2018 top ten were taken in my home town of Easton, PA, New York City and Hoboken, NJ.
I shot these two pictures with my iPhone SE on Sunday, July 22, 2018, while walking over the Fahy Bridge in Bethlehem, PA. The bridge crosses the Lehigh River and connects Historic Bethlehem with South Bethlehem.
In the distance you can the old Bethlehem Steel plant on the right side of the river.
I modified both photos with the HDR Blue Sky filter on the Tonality App.
I took this picture of Statue of Liberty this past Wednesday (05/02/18) from the top of Outlook Hill on Governors Island, in New York City. It was about 4:45 pm when I took the picture, approximately 15 minutes before that portion of the Island closed for the day. It was a sunny, but very windy day, with some clouds. It was an almost surreal sight to see the Sun Rays beaming down of the Statue of Liberty at the moment that I took this picture with my iPhone SE.
Another stop I made in Manhattan last Sunday was at Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The park looked great on this nearly perfect summer day. Whenever I visit this park these days and can’t help but admire how much it has been been improved in last ten years or so. I’m old enough to remember what this park was like back to late 70’s and 80’s when it dirty and and dangerous and not a welcoming place.
Photo taken with iPhone SE
I made a trip in to New York this past Sunday, with stops a various spots in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Good trip, the weather was beautiful and the pace of the city seemed leisurely slow that day. Late in the afternoon I decided to take a load off my feet in the shaded Liz Christy Garden on the the corner of Houston and the Bowery. It is a small park, but it is a remarkably secluded island of calm surrounded by vast urban ocean.
I took the pictures below with my iPhone SE and modified them to the Tonality app.
Here is short video I shot during my lunch break yesterday on the banks of the scenic Delaware river.
Gee, I haven’t posted an iPad app review in long time, but there are a few apps that I have used recently that I would like to post brief reviews of because I think they are quite good. I use these apps on a regular basis and I gave all of them a 4 or 5 star ratings on iTunes. So, here they are:
1) City Maps 2Go – $1.99 *****
This app enables you to download maps of large and midsize cities across the U.S., as well as in other countries. The maps are very well detailed and useful, especially when you go offline. I discontinued my ATT service for my iPad well over a year ago and I go wifi only now, so this app is particularly useful to me now. Are the maps as good as Google maps or Mapquest? No, but they are definitely detailed enough for you to find your way around with.
2) Hotel Tonight – Free ****
This app is a specialized app that provides the user with discounted hotel rates in select cities in the U.S., Canada and Europe (although primarily in the U.K. at this point). However, the rates provided by the app are only for same day/night that you access the app. For example, if you traveled to Los Angeles or New York tommorrow morning and had to stay over for between one and five nights the app would show you hotels that have rooms available at discounted rates for any where between one night and five nights. The hotels would rather rent the rooms at a discounted rate than let the rooms go unoccupied. Of course, there are other travel apps that enable you to make same day reservations, but I like this app because the rates seem to be as low or lower than other those displayed on rival hotel apps and it simplifies the decision process a great deal because the number of hotels featured is usually limited to a fairly small number of quality hotels. I haven’t actually made a reservation with the app yet, but I still look at the hotel listings in the app on a regular basis because I find their hotels descriptions and photos interesting. The company that runs the app only features hotels that members of their staff have stayed at. The descriptions are concise and witty. Hotel locations are provided via Google maps.
3) Snapseed – Free *****
This is an image editing app from Google. It is similar to Photogene and other popular photo editing apps. It has some nice filters like Instagram. It enables you to share photos in a variety of ways and integrates well with Google+. The iOS version of this app was recently marked down to free from $4.99, so you really can’t complain about the price. I really didn’t need this aap because I already have Photogene and Diptic, but when it became available for free I had to give it a try. I like it a lot. The interface is very clean and easy to use.
4) Chart IQ+ – $22.99 *****
The app is designed for professional and advanced stock chartists. I have been a student of technical analysis for a couple of decades and I have used a wide a variety of PC based technical analysis programs and I think this app is compares very favorably to other charting apps and web based charting sites. If you are a professional trader/investor or an individual trader who has a serious interest in technical analysis this app is well worth the price in my opinion. The app integrates with StockTwits and enables you post charts directly to Twitter or post a link to a chart that you have constructed to another site, such as a blog. Real time quotes are available for an additional fee.
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