Footpath gates, Wiltshire, December 2007Yesterday, I mentioned my disappointment with the photography I was able to do while I was home for the Christmas vacation. There were 2 main reasons for this.
First the weather. Typical of Christmas in the West of England it was dreary and overcast much of the time. When there was a slight clearing in the sky it was accompanied by high winds. These conditions do not lend themselves well to photography, I find. Flat skies, flatter light. Even in the middle of the day my autofocus was having trouble locking on due to the generally low contrast. I did try to make the best of the conditions, however.
Secondly is the problem of capturing the essence of my mind's eye. I want to put together a series on my home area, around the countryside of Wiltshire. I'll post more on what I'm trying to do with this series at another time but the problem I have is the landscape as I perceive it and remember it is not quite what the camera sees. Too many roads and cars and new buildings. I think i need to get out my walking boots and get further from civilization. It's not that I don't know these areas well, just that the mind has a tendency to block out the unsightly bits, which the camera sees all too well.
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Don't be too hard on yourself, but more of looking at this as the start of a new process. A new process that takes some time to learn and understand. Thus you will have ambugity and both highs and lows, but as you reflect, photograph and then reflect some more, your Muse will come whisper something to that will bring it all together. Just keep listening and allow the process some time;- )
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw the picture "Footpath gate", I thought it bit flat, unsaturated. After downloading it, and opening it in Lightzone 3.2, the colors were immediately clearer, more saturated, especially so in the sky (e.g. the cyan in the clouds)
ReplyDeleteMust be something in the software. LZ appears better color coded than my RSS browser (Vienna) an my usual browser (Camino). To be complete, I work on Macs.
zeus - that's pretty much entirely my own fault. I work in AdobeRGB for editing and don't often convert to sRGB for the web.
ReplyDeleteTBH, it's a bit flat in Mozilla on my Windows machine, too.