it’s all how you see it…
November 7, 2011 § 13 Comments
This picture (below) proves that my camera does not SEE the way I do. OK, yes, I wear glasses (sometimes) but when I looked through the back yards at this ‘scene’, the colors were so luscious, so nicely burnished and blurred except for the pinpricks of purple morning glories, you would have thought Claude Monet had put the scene together.
But my camera said no, it looked like this.
Kinda ho-hum.
What’s the big deal? you ask.
I don’t know – I just wanted to catch the colors and the way they layered through the trees.
My camera is so objective; I am not.
And so I turned to my MS Digital Image software. Pure cheating. Pure fun. Pure fakery.
Was this how I saw it?
Nope, the above picture is too “sharp,” too grainy, tho’ I like the contrast.
Um, no, it wasn’t like the above, not a van-gogh-gone-palette-knife-crazy. No.
Still not there with the above filter, called “ink outlines” but I do like this one because the flowers “pop.” See ’em on the right?
OK, yeah, this was more like it, not quite that watery, but closer. Still, I swear, the colors were all much brighter. Ah, well, you get the picture.
Happy rolling-toward-Holidays weather!
This Writing Life ... 
They are all beautiful!
Isn’t that always the way it is with a camera… getting it to show the same picture you saw is always a challenge. Love the Monet-like rendering you’ve given your image: those morning glories are a great gift, a gorgeous pop of color!
At least you didn’t have a head to cut off, which is my favourite trick with a camera. I think Monet would be proud of some of those images! The colours are just gorgeous. But isn’t it hard to get other people to see what we see, almost regardless of medium? Yet the urge to try keeps us experimenting and that, as you so ably prove, is a very good thing.
Oh, the magic of technology, something that Monet couldn’t have imagined. What took him days or even months to achieve can be done by just a click of our finger… real cool!
Just this morning my husband and I had an exchange about the view from our window. I oohed about how beautiful it was and he said I should take a picture. I told him it wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful as the real thing. True it is. Some things are difficult to capture.
Wow – you still have leaves on the trees. Very pretty. With two snow storms in the last two week the trees here are all bare and we are left with nasty, rotting leaves all over the ground…
When I was on my trip, I stopped in Blue Rapids, Kansas, to visit a photographer I’ve become friends with through blogging. He and his wife are splendid people, and he’s a crack photographer. You should see his equipment! He has this bag full of lenses that — well,l that I can’t even describe.
But it’s a real comfort to know, now, that the difference between his photos and mine isn’t just his skill with the aperture settings!
In lieu of all that equipment, I mess a good bit, too, with what I’ve learned to call “post processing”. It is wonderful fun!
I tweaked the colors in your photo in Photoshop. I couldn’t help myself. Is there a way I can attach the photo to this comment window? Drag and drop it? I’ll try and see if it works.
/Users/suezsmith/Desktop/OHsPIXsaturated.jpg
Oh, well, I guess that didn’t work. I added more light to the photo and saturated some of the colors. I have a feeling it’s close to what you actually saw. I wish I could show you!
Dear T, No, I can’t see what you did but I can imagine and I’ll bet you’re spot on!!!!! thanks for trying that.
I should go back and try the saturation thing…forgot about it!!!!
But you are the artist. I would trust you to render the very thing I saw – what if you post it on your blog?
Couldn’t help myself… gave it a few tweaks, just to see what might happen. Stop by if you like, see if I got anywhere close.
I do like the last one best! I love playing with those features. And consider that your camera didn’t see it right because of the camera — mine has been dropped on its head so many times, first the color balance got off and always had to be adjusted. Now it won’t open at all. I’m shopping!
It’s fun to play with photos this way, isn’t it