This morning I took an impromptu trip to Santa Monica. The seed was planted yesterday when someone posted a photo on Facebook taken early that morning at the beach and I thought… why don’t I not be lazy tomorrow and make plans before noon? A walk on the beach with a cup of coffee is my idea of heaven. So I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and got out the door by 9am this morning.

Did you know there is NO traffic at that hour? I made it from Burbank to Santa Monica in under 30 minutes. It was just as fast making the return trip at 11am.

While I toted my big DSLR (plus three lenses), I didn’t even use it. I ended up sticking with my just-out-of-the-box iPhone 5 to snap photos. This is my first iPhone and I feel like I’ve jumped into the future after years of using a Blackberry. It’s about time!

I received Photojojo’s iPhone lenses for Christmas, but I forgot to bring them along. Silly me.

Here are the photos I posted on Instagram (username: asherworldturns).

This is where the running group LA Leggers meets on Saturday mornings. I trained with them to run marathons back in 2007. This building brings me back to those cold, pre-dawn mornings running past the Santa Monica Pier.

I picked up a gingerbread latte at Infuzion Cafe.

When I returned home, I played with other photo editing apps besides Instagram. I downloaded Photoshop Express, Pixlromatic, and Diptic (all are free except the last one, which is 99 cents).

My photo editing world just opened WAY up!

iPhoneography is the reason I am most excited about my new phone. I look forward to more experimentation!

What other photo editing apps do you use?

Santa Monica on Dwellable