Sunday, November 22, 2020

Editing to Pass the Time on a Sunday Morning

 It's going to be a long winter. Photographically speaking anyway. 

Of course, November is particularly bleak with its bare trees and dull skies with no snow cover as of yet. (Maybe tonight, though.) It's not that winter around here provides an abundance of opportunity, but it does provide some. And there will soon be Christmas lights too if one can find an evening with snow and not too frigid temperatures.

But still, opportunities will be much more limited than say in spring when the flowers and blossoms emerge and for certain than in autumn where even usually banal scenes can look quite wonderful.

So it is that this morning, I found myself playing with old photos. Maybe I could re-edit them and whether I like the result or not, I could have some fun in the process.

I already liked this photo of the dock on a foggy September morning in 2018.


But I thought that I could bring a little more life to it. I didn't want a big change, just a bit more pop. You may find it difficult to notice the difference, especially at Blogger resolution. I did want the difference to be subtle.


Then, I worked with a concert photo of the guitarist leading the clapping but giving me the stink eye. This was the out of camera photo. This is what you can get in a concert while nailed to your seat.


Even back then, in July 2019, I cropped it and converted it to monochrome. All I adjusted this time was to darken the background a little more to almost pure black, thus eliminating all distractions.


Finally, I really went to town on the next image -- a candid from 2019 -- of someone with whom I am acquainted.


I decided to crop big to turn it into a portrait and then convert it to mono. I also decided that I wanted to make it gritty.


It kept me amused for awhile.

Now I must dress and exercise. Sigh.



11 comments:

gigi-hawaii said...

Nice photos. The first one looks so dreamy. Almost spiritual. Good job.

MARY G said...

I think that lightening the blue tones in the mist photo really improved it. As did taking the purple highlights off the second photo. But I sort of miss the red in the third one. Nice definition and texture in the revision, but a bit of a loss of mood.
Editing is a lot of fun!

Marie Smith said...

We will have to content ourselves with many hours indoors in the coming months, AC. That doesn’t even take the pandemic into account. It will be a long winter I fear.

Margaret said...

I love those reflections, but can't spot the difference. Is it lighter? As you know, I have no eye and any artsy photo I take is an accident.

DJan said...

I like the portrait in the last photo the best, but they are all pretty darn wonderful, AC.

Joanne Noragon said...

Well done, especially the last two.

Vicki Lane said...

I especially like the last one!

Rita said...

Nice! :)

Ed said...

I remember those days of carrying a bag full of lenses, filters, auxillary flashes, etc. to get that photo and then you weren't sure until it came back from the developer. These days we can just take one picture, know that we have it and then go home and do all the affects we want to get it just right. Kind of shifted the time from outside behind the lens to in a chair in front of a computer.

William Kendall said...

Creative editing!

Kay said...

I really love those first two photos. It's so dreamy beautiful.