The moon is real. The hills are real. And so are the trees and the freshly worked field. But the photo is Photoshopped. So is the photo real? While I'm at it, I might as well ask if "moonset" is a real word?(PS: Have you adjusted your camera clock time to correspond to the shift away from DST? "Does time really matter?" you ask. My answer: "Metadata matters!")
I was back at Lonesome Lake this morning looking for photo opportunities. As I have already admitted, I am amazed with the fascinating texture of the prairie grass here. And so I took more photos.This is an HDR picture, first processed in the HDR Pro software in Photoshop and then converted to black and white using a NIK set of filters. This is mostly a "real" photo, though if you look at the trees along the upper right part of the photo, they look a little ghostly. Don't ask me why.
Those familiar with the movie "Shawshank Redemption" know that today's title is a bit of a paraphrase of an observation that Red makes in the movie.This is another HDR photo, and one of the secrets of good landscape HDR photos is good clouds. I got lucky on this particular day.
Here's a candid photo I took as Deb and I strolled around in Bruges, Belgium.
Here's another photo from what I am now calling my "Rural Decay" series. It's the little Metro van pictured yesterday. If you missed yesterday's post, check it out here.I've been doing a little research and have learned that the Metro was produced by International Harvester from 1938 to 1975, which is a pretty long run for a vehicle. It is a "step" van, and was designed for delivery of things like milk and bread. The milkman who used to deliver milk to our neighborhood drove a little van and I'm wondering if it wasn't an IH Metro. I have fond memories of doorstep delivery of fresh milk and the man named Bob who delivered it.This blue and white metro has a license plate that dates back to the 70s, though I'm guessing the van was manufactured a decade or so before that. This little van represents an interesting piece of history and I wonder how it ended up on a farm north of Watertown? Was it "put out to pasture," so to speak? Did it have a function on this farm? Or was it simply abandoned here by some city dweller who no longer wanted it?You can invent your own story. . .
A little delivery van with a name like "Metro" seems like a paradox as it sits surrounded by decaying farm buildings 15 miles north of Watertertown. This is one of those photographic subjects that called me over and said, "Photograph me!" And so I did.I told my students yesterday that I am more inclined to take photos of peaceful landscapes, blooming flowers and fall leaves than I am to photograph things with bullet holes in them. Though now that I think of it, as I drive around through our rural landscape, I see many things that have been shot. And, as a photographer, I sometimes "shoot" things that have been shot. Like this Metro.Check tomorrow's post for more about this little van.
This is another example of an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. In fact, there are two photos here - one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the dark side of the old hulk of a car. This photo is fairly realistic, though the rays that are visible in the sky aren't something you would normally see in a photo taken at this time of day. The HDR photo accentuates the contrast in the sky and you see the rays.
Yes, the man in the chairs is me. (I struggled hard with the grammar of this sentence.)What you are looking at is my rudimentary first attempt at light painting, which uses a long shutter speed and a flashlight of some sort. I didn't paint my head because it was very early in morning and I hadn't fixed my unruly hair yet. Plus, this photo looks better without faces on me.Happy Halloween!Canon 5DII 30s f/6.3 ISO800 24mm
I was out in the backyard looking for HDR (high dynamic range) opportunities. I was looking for subjects that had a broad contrast from very bright and very dark. The first thing I saw was an assortment of aspen leaves, which had just fallen during the night. I liked the how the backlighting accentuated the textures of the veins in the leaf and the blades of grass that surround it. It had frosted during the night, which adds a little more character to the bokeh in this photo.Canon 5DII 1/320s f/3.5 ISO200 100mm
This was taken on September 4, 2005. I do believe that in 2005, central South Dakota was dryer than "normal," though that doesn't necessarily mean much. I do know that the reservoir was very low in 2005. Maybe the Lake Oahe historians can help me on this one?
