Digital photography

 

Art in the Park has a large book sale and Rick and I both bought books. You pay whatever you want for them. I bought this one. Each chapter is about one photograph and the decisions that the author made to improve/change the original. 

 

Normally, when I get my photos on to my computer, I use the photo editor that came with the computer and make a few minor adjustments: I may straighten, crop and enhance the brightness or colour if I don't think the camera has picked up the scene the way I remember it. The author of the book makes the point that a photographer is adjusting the photo to try and duplicate the feeling that he got when seeing the scene.

Rick has loaded a program called Gimp on to one of my laptops and suggested that I would have more flexibility with that. I had a look at it and found it rather intense, set up a lot like photoshop. I decided that rather than learning a new program I would first see if I could get more out of the one I am already comfortable with. So I went into the garden and just took some random photos to play with.

Original. Dead tomato plant leaf.

 

Modified. The author wrote about taking everyday objects and making them look almost abstract.

Original. Broccoli floret (Not going to get a huge meal from my broccoli)

Modified. The program allows you to blur the background and to either make the colour warmer or cooler - in this case warmer.

Original. This is a plant that just started to grow in the vegetable bed. I think it must have been from a seed in the compost - melon?squash?cucumber?

Modified. I think I have gone too far on the brightness but like that it has bought out the fuzz around the leaves and the tendril.

Original, another dying leaf.

Modified, cropped and colour enhanced, cooler.

I tried a couple of inside images too. Original.

Modified.

Original

Modified.

When Eve visited we took a walk around Silver Lake and I played with a couple of photos that I took there.

Original. Great Blue Heron.

Modified. Very blue.

Original. Little Green Heron

Modified. Mostly just cropping and a slight increase in contrast.

Original. Little Green Heron

Modified. I was trying to enhance the reflection. It took a lot of playing around.

I have also signed up for a 2 day digital photography course at Fanshawe so there will be more messing with photos to come.