When a picture serves many purposes

[catsittingstill]

I'm doing several things here. First, my friend jedediah stayed up late last night, messing with e-mail settings for me and Callie, and I'd like to say "Thank you!" So this is by way of a thank-you picture--sort of like a card, you know.

Second I've been messing with Flicker (which promises to be *seriously* addictive--I mean, go to the main page and search for pictures of "canoe" for instance. Or look at one of the groups like www.flickr.com/groups/spectacular_animals.) Some of these people are, or ought to be, professionals. Next to these, my own little snapshots look kind of sad, but I'm still trying to figure out ways to embed them into my lj now and again.

Third, it's a way to practice lj markup. So this may show up mangled for a while if I haven't got it figured out yet.





Thank you, Jed. You lift my spirits!

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Oooh!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :-) It's a pretty balloon, and it was flying lower than usual that time.

There's a bigger version of the picture at flickr, if you like. I've been toying with the idea of using it for a desktop picture.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting composition, too--all that sky and foliage set off by the balloon.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I actually thought about cropping it, but decided it just seemed more true to how I saw it to leave in the surrounding sky and branches.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I think your intuition was valid; one has a very different vision when on focuses closely on an object. It might be worth "painting" out some of the bits of foliage at the bottom of the frame; I think they're distracting, and don't add anything. Are you post-processing your images?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You mean the little bits of leaves at the bottom middle, or the cedar tree at bottom right?

I'm not post-processing at the moment. I feel a little funny about it; some folks on flickr do it, and I suppose there's no reason why not as long as it's not a documentary shot, like a picture for a newspaper or something. But I also don't have much idea how to do it, or much of an "artist's eye" to figure out when the changes I've made are good or not.

BTW, if you want, flickr lets people put notes on the photograph itself, so if you want to mark exactly what you're talking about, click on the photo to go through to flickr; at the top left corner of the picture is a tab that says "add note." When you click on it, you get a little adjustable square you can move around on the picture and resize, and a little text field to type the comment in. If you let me know what you think I should take out, I could give it a try.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Ansel Adams once said that the negative was the score, and the print was the performance; I think this is a sensible attitude, though custom prints usually aren't individually handmade any more.

The most important sort of post-processing consists primarily of controlling contrast and intensity, both overall and locally; these make a huge difference to what can be seen in the image. Cameras don't see the way eyes do; the eye moves around a scene, and the the pupil changes in size depending on light and attenion, so a modified image can be more true to original vision than an unmodified version. (Exception: an image made as a technical record of lighting.) Removing and adding material is a dicier matter. For record images, of course, this is right out. And it's very hard to do this well; I've found that I usually prefer my original composition, unless I am thinking about what I'm going to remove when I make the original image, or unless some particular image element is so arresting in an of itself that isolating it is effective. That said, the little bits of foliage at the bottom center of the image seem to mainly be distracting, and I think losing them would be an improvement. Rely on your judgement, which after all got you to make the original image; like Peter Shickele says, "if it sounds good, it is good."

[callibr8]

Lovely shot, and I especially like the rainbow balloon! Almost like tie-dye. :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is a very colorful balloon. I'm pretty sure it's the same one going over on different days in part because of the rainbow colors. It's a very cheery sight on a crisp fall day, and you can hear the difference in the burner when they turn it up to gain altitude.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This made me happy after a long day.

And agreed about the nifty quasi-tie-dye look of the ballon. Very cool, very pretty. Good photo.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I'm glad you like it.