Those turkeys pointed out an interesting thing about photography to me, my walking companion commented on how beautiful they looked but seeing their blue faces in the photos exclaimed they were quite ugly. Guess a good static look at things can change perception.
The flock looks wild but are actually in a pen. I'm glad because they are absurdly friendly and would wind up in your lap were it not for the turkey wire.
Lulu's lashes were a surprise for me when I looked at the image. Another critter that looks like it is wearing eye makeup are the antelope we have around here. No wonder the lonesome cowboys sang about them!
Andy Excellent blue hour photo! Thanks for mentioning the Shell Ginger, I remembered that's what one of the strange blooms was since you called it out.
GeorgeBo Now that the spell is broken how about a COLOR Christmas Tree?
Here are some from the temperate rain forest.with the D800 and 85mm f/1.4 AI-S that I got from Chuong.
Something I ran into in 2014 near a small lake up north that has no buildings on it's shores are very large stones wedged into large tree crotches. This was a favorite fishing lake of many people, and there are aluminum row boats and canoes chained to trees near the only access to the lake - a two track that dead ends into an area just large enough to turn your car back around. I found 3 or four 200-300 pound large rocks wedged like this, and I can not think of any reason to do this - other than to hurt the tree. It took great effort to wedge these stones 6-12 feet off the ground. The highest one seems to have killed one trunk, is killing another trunk, and the one surviving trunk is sick. So I was attempting to image these photos again, because previous attempts failed at conveying the drama I felt was necessary. This sparked a debate with my wife which I also had many, many times with editorial photographers. Can you alter an image to make it better?
Editorial photogs had a big kerfuffle 10-15 years ago, because a sports photog photoshoped out a fans foot that was watching the play from behind a chain fence. The disembodied right foot was on the extreme right edge of the image, and had absolutely nothing to do with the baseball play photographed. If he cropped it out it ruined the composition. The photo won an award, which was promptly taken back, because of the edit. The purist in editorial (I worked at a medium sized newspaper) felt they were "light scribes", and it would change "what really happened" if edits were allowed. I was a marketing, and advertising photographer not constrained by such considerations. My mission was to create a relatable idealized reality in an image to communicate a message. To be clear - nobody in editorial was advocating changing photos to convey a false reality, but some felt - as do I - that removing extraneous distractions from an image focuses the image on the subject.
I pointed out to the editorial photogs that they also were altering reality by not capturing the whole scene. By cropping, by reducing 3D to 2D, by altering contrast (poly contrast filters), paper choice, burning and dodging. With digital imaging that added changing color, saturation, hue, highlight and shadows, etc. So, back to the trees all shot with the 28mm f2.8 ais
The tree shot straight as a 3 horizontal image panorama
Hunting for more drama here on a B&W conversion
Kicking it up a notch by adding sun rays
Another single frame example, and a bit more extreme
Straight up
B&W
Sun ray drama
Any thoughts on edits like these, or why anyone would wedge large stones into tree crotches?
James Markus wrote:
Any thoughts on edits like these, or why anyone would wedge large stones into tree crotches?
HaHa "tree crotches" !
I have no idea why anyone would do that. Maybe Bigfoot?
I think the scale of the rocks is lost in capture. The B&W works better than the colour versions, not sure about the sun rays.
Regarding edits, I think as long as it's not photojournalism then you can do what you want as long as you state it in advance eg a lot of nightscapes/astroscapes you need to do a composite with an exposure for the foreground and one for the night sky.
It's the age old argument isn't it? Ansel Adams did post work in the dark room bla bla bla.
Some people think it's art so there is no limits. On the subject, an extreme example I did recently discover that you can replace the sky in On1 RAW.
James Markus wrote:
Something I ran into in 2014 near a small lake up north that has no buildings on it's shores are very large stones wedged into large tree crotches. This was a favorite fishing lake of many people, and there are aluminum row boats and canoes chained to trees near the only access to the lake - a two track that dead ends into an area just large enough to turn your car back around. I found 3 or four 200-300 pound large rocks wedged like this, and I can not think of any reason to do this - other than to hurt the tree. It took great effort to wedge these stones 6-12 feet off the ground. The highest one seems to have killed one trunk, is killing another trunk, and the one surviving trunk is sick. So I was attempting to image these photos again, because previous attempts failed at conveying the drama I felt was necessary. This sparked a debate with my wife which I also had many, many times with editorial photographers. Can you alter an image to make it better?
Editorial photogs had a big kerfuffle 10-15 years ago, because a sports photog photoshoped out a fans foot that was watching the play from behind a chain fence. The disembodied right foot was on the extreme right edge of the image, and had absolutely nothing to do with the baseball play photographed. If he cropped it out it ruined the composition. The photo won an award, which was promptly taken back, because of the edit. The purist in editorial (I worked at a medium sized newspaper) felt they were "light scribes", and it would change "what really happened" if edits were allowed. I was a marketing, and advertising photographer not constrained by such considerations. My mission was to create a relatable idealized reality in an image to communicate a message. To be clear - nobody in editorial was advocating changing photos to convey a false reality, but some felt - as do I - that removing extraneous distractions from an image focuses the image on the subject.
I pointed out to the editorial photogs that they also were altering reality by not capturing the whole scene. By cropping, by reducing 3D to 2D, by altering contrast (poly contrast filters), paper choice, burning and dodging. With digital imaging that added changing color, saturation, hue, highlight and shadows, etc. So, back to the trees all shot with the 28mm f2.8 ais
Any thoughts on edits like these, or why anyone would wedge large stones into tree crotches?...Show more →
When I was in the Smoky mtns, the locals talked of natives bending branches of tree such that the bend branch grew pointing the correct direction. That is the only reason I could see for putting a rock in the wye.
Jim - I prefer the B&W too, without the sunrays.
Ronny - that's a wonderful shot. It's such a surreal landscape I can almost live with the fisheye curve.
