Saturday, April 16, 2016

Alternative Reality

There is always an alternative — or almost always at any rate, At a base level, we choose what to wear today and what to make for dinner. At a high level, it's what you choose to make the world a better place, whether it be the world at large, the world around you, or your own personal world.

Aside: Of course, there is a growing conviction among scientists that no one has a real choice and that each supposed decision is predetermined by the combination of our genetic makeup plus our experiences. But I am not sure that I agree with that, and, anyway, it certainly feels like we have choices and alternatives.

That all sounds cerebral, but it was just a wayfaring preamble to showing alternatives in photos.

You may remember this photo although it certainly isn't very memorable. I really shot it for the HHT (Happy Truck Thursday) meme on Flickr.


In taking the shot, my vantage wasn't great as I peered down from the road. So I shot it from several alternative angles and chose to post the one that looked best to me. (There is a lesson there; don't just take one shot, but try a few angles, but that's a digression).

After posting that, though, I wanted to see what it would look like with an alternative crop as well as in alternate monochrome.


I don't like one any better than the other, but I enjoyed processing and looking at both. Alternatives enrich our lives.

Here's another example. I posted the kids dancing in my previous post.


But, alternately, for yet another Flickr meme — HSS or Happy Slider Sunday — I walked on the wild side and came up with this sort of alternate reality rendition.


Alternatives can be fun, or at least mildly amusing.

3 comments:

Tabor said...

Nice to see how moods change when we fiddle with photos and that in itself is a whole political argument we could have on what pictures say and what the photographer says.

Marie Smith said...

Enjoyed the different perspectives. We bring ourselves to every choice, experience, conversation, book, movie, etc. throughout our lives. It still feel like choice though. I am glad of that. Would we feel like automatons otherwise? Have a great weekend.

ADRIAN said...

It's a grand pickup and the second works much better for the crop. It is always worth flipping them 180° but probably not in this case.