December 20, 2009 - in Boston

bdcolen

dychui

What a lovely capture.. the way you framed it tells the entire story. Now I know what you mean by not needing captions. That cat is thinking about dinner.

- Daniel Chui

Richard

Mmmmmm.....birds. :eat

Nice one.

bdcolen

dychui wrote:

What a lovely capture.. the way you framed it tells the entire story. Now I know what you mean by not needing captions. That cat is thinking about dinner.

- Daniel Chui

Absolutely! Actually, I sent a cell phone version of this to two of my kids this morning and I captioned it -
"I wants my breakfast!"

bdcolen

Richard wrote:

Mmmmmm.....birds. :eat

Nice one.

Thanks, Richard. Call that dark strip the "street."

Richard

bdcolen wrote:

Thanks, Richard. Call that dark strip the "street."

Urban life for cats (and birds)

Flyinggina

A cat can dream, can't he?

I am biased, being a cat lover, but this is a wonderful photo. Very well framed. And, as has been noted, it illustrates the fact that pictures can tell the story without a title though I note that you titled it for your children!. In fact, the desire of the viewer to put a title to it is almost irresistible.

A nice capture of today's weather too. Aren't we lucky to have gotten just enough snow.

Virginia

bdcolen

Flyinggina wrote:

A cat can dream, can't he?

I am biased, being a cat lover, but this is a wonderful photo. Very well framed. And, as has been noted, it illustrates the fact that pictures can tell the story without a title though I note that you titled it for your children!. In fact, the desire of the viewer to put a title to it is almost irresistible.

A nice capture of today's weather too. Aren't we lucky to have gotten just enough snow.

Virginia

Thanks, Virginia - and are we ever - if we had to get any this early! But we did manage to escape the foot to 15" and blizzard conditions.

As to the caption for my kids - it was just a joke. They aren't caption people.

rainbow

Really well done!

I wonder that the birds are even out in the storm. Perhaps that dark landing radiates what little heat there is from the daylight.

thoth

Excellent photo, B.D. This is a great example of how street is a state of mind. The story in this shot is beyond clearly defined.

michswiss

Fun image Does your feline friend bring you "gifts" on occasion? Also to the thread title, nothing in this image tells me that I'm in Boston.

thoth

michswiss wrote:

... Also to the thread title, nothing in this image tells me that I'm in Boston.

bdcolen

michswiss wrote:

Fun image Does your feline friend bring you "gifts" on occasion? Also to the thread title, nothing in this image tells me that I'm in Boston.

First, Jen, you are absolutely correct about the misleading title. My bad! (Which makes this a great example of how you can get into trouble with titles for photos. )

And the little 'princess' does not bring us gifts as she is never allowed outside - she is simply too damn dumb for us to take a chance on letting her out; she'd last about 20 minutes before a car would take her out.

bdcolen

thoth wrote:

Ha! Ha! Ha! to you too!

Nir

Lovely shot!

bdcolen

Nir wrote:

Lovely shot!

Thanks, Nir!

rutt

This is so funny. I've been stalking my cats doing the same thing.

I'd like to see you darken this a little to get good shadows. I know the snowstorm effect you are going for, kind of a white out, but I still want those good shadows.

bdcolen

rutt wrote:

This is so funny. I've been stalking my cats doing the same thing.

I'd like to see you darken this a little to get good shadows. I know the snowstorm effect you are going for, kind of a white out, but I still want those good shadows.

First, I have darkened the shadows, the roof, the birds, and the trees. They are now as dark as I want them. When the next snow storm strikes, and your cats are looking out the window at the birds, go for those darker shadows! But in the mean time, this is indeed the effect I wanted and want. The light was flat. The shadows were soft. The snow blurred things. This is what I saw.

rutt

It's your picture and of course you'll do what you want with it. And I do know what you mean about snow storm flat light.

I'm developing Rutt's First Law of Post-processing Advice: No photographer ever thinks it's possible to improve on his own version of one of his photographs, because it's what he saw.

Of course, there is truth in this, but also, of course, it's confusing. I see more than one thing at once almost all the time. In the flat light of a snow storm, I'm conscious of seeing the scene in the flat light with low contrast, but I'm also conscious of my visual system going to work and cutting through the flatness and seeing the contrast. After all, there are millions of years of evolution that make that possible. Similarly with white balance. Did I see the yellow scene lit by the tungsten lights? Or did I see the "properly" balanced scene as if it were properly white balanced? I can "see" either. I think I do see both. Before I trained my eyes, I think I say the "balanced" scene almost exclusively.

So, it makes sense to say, "this is what I want to show, this is the seeing I want to share with others, this is the mood I want to capture." I'm not so sure about "this is what I saw."

Also there is a big difference in what people will accept on a computer monitor compared to what they will accept in print. For reasons that I don't understand, the brain's (at least my brain's) visual correction system works much better on a computer monitor than on a print. Many people won't notice poor white balance on monitor but won't accept it on a print.

All of that was just provoked by your particular way of saying that it was what you saw. As I said, I know what you are trying to express here. That low contrast does capture the snow storm.