Saturday, September 27, 2014

Shades of Art Work

One thing I like doing when out taking pictures in the woods, etc. is to find combinations of colors next to each other. Sometimes one is a "background" and other times they are right next to each other. The out-of-focus areas behind the main subject can also add a different dimension. Even though I try to plan these, I also know that most pictures are a matter of luck, lighting and things you didn't notice when you were taking the picture in the first place. Back in the old days of film, we used to remind ourselves that film was the cheapest expenditure. The more pictures you take, the more good pictures you will have. Here are a few from my most recent visit to Whitewater State Park.

The one above surprised me when I saw it. I had taken two pictures of the same sets of colors and flowers focusing on different parts of the picture. What I didn't expect was the truly out-of-focus effect of the reddish flowers with the small blue ones in the left-center. How many shades of just green there are!!

Then there are those times when even my best planning of focus is overcome by the auto-focus in the camera itself. That genie does some of my best work. The real center of this picture ended up as the shadow in the center and the leaf pointing to the right. I had planned to have that darker section on the upper left. At least something I did worked as planned.


The next two were truly created on the computer. First, above, the cropping of the original gave me a combination with the blue in the center as well as the yellow to the right both being in focus. I have discovered that some flowers, depending on zoom, cropping, sharpness and lighting have an almost painted quality as the mixing of the blues, greens and yellows in the center of this one above.

So I did a little more of the playing around with Gimp (I'm too cheap to but Photoshop.). As I have said before, this gives me the opportunity to play at art. (I'm not an artist, but I play one on the Internet.) Using a picture cropped a little differently I tweaked and played with different filters, layers and fadings. The blending of the colors as well as the flow of colors into one another struck me- so I kept it.

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