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December 20, 2009 - in Boston
bdcolen
Registered Users Posts: 3,804 Major grins
bd@bdcolenphoto.com
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
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Comments
- Daniel Chui
Nice one.
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!"
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Thanks, Richard. Call that dark strip the "street."
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Urban life for cats (and birds)
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
"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." Diane Arbus
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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.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
I wonder that the birds are even out in the storm. Perhaps that dark landing radiates what little heat there is from the daylight.
First, Jen, you are absolutely correct about the misleading title. My bad!
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.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Ha! Ha! Ha! to you too!
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Nir Alon
images of my thoughts
Thanks, Nir!
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
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.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
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.