Good photography and good writing are each, both an art and
a craft, requiring intangible talents and learned skills. More often than not, endeavors in each
medium require refinement before the piece is finally finished. Writers go
through countless sheets of paper as they write, rework and rewrite.
Photographers snap innumerable images and employ a myriad of techniques to
capture the desired essence of an image.
I first began to dabble in photography my senior year of
college. We studied basic camera functions as well as composition, lighting and
darkroom techniques. The image to the left is that of a “Comparison” darkroom
assignment, where the identical negative was developed numerous times using
different processing techniques. Aside from requiring a darkroom and darkroom
equipment the whole process was quite time consuming and you had to wait hours
or days from time the picture was taken until you could actually view the end
result.
Let me give you some examples: As I mentioned in my
“Handcycle Diaries” blog on my rides in the summer I had spotted a couple spots
that I thought would be provide ideal locations for fall foliage pictures. For
whatever reason, the leaves of this past fall weren’t as vibrant as I had
envisioned and I was a little let down with raw pictures I had taken.
There were a few that I liked but none that jumped out and
screamed fall…but let me share with you two examples of ugly duckling photos
that actually turned into pictures I am proud of.
This photograph was taken in early October on a ride at a nearby forest preserve. I liked how clouds and tree-line reflected on the water but there isn't any of your typical fall colorings. Some of the tress had already lost their leaves while others had muted colorings and many remained green.
My MacBook has HP PhotoShop as an editing program which I began to experiment with
Black & White and Sepia coloring
are shown here
These pictures are examples of some of the "special effects" options
The image shown below is the one that I chose to go with...by making adjustment to the color "saturation" levels (whatever the hell that means) I finally achieved a colorful fall image.
Since I was having trouble getting colorful fall pictures I turned my attention to the ground level and can up with these images.
"Cropping" the image tended to bring you in for a closer view and I felt the Black&White version was more striking.
