Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Information versus Art


If it wasn't for my wife, I probably would take a lot less photographs. I got in the habit a long time a go of taking photos that were only meant to provide information about my outing to be shared with her, then thrown out. It was my way of telling her what I had seen while I was out. There was little intent in trying to creative.

It turned out many of those same pictures were good for explaining things on my blog. Of all the pictures I take on an outing, only a couple go beyond simple information to  create something more imaginative.

This image, taken on my last outing, depicts a boat duck hunting on the Bay, but it is also an attempt to show it in a more artful fashion. I want to bring this photo into a future conversation also.


I cropped the same picture to zoom in and show you the horizon. I mentioned recently on my blog how a digital image will break down in the distance. That is what causes the water along the horizon to look almost like ice piled up. With a higher pixel count, the horizon would appear as it really is - a straight line. But, I thought it looked kind of cool and I thought you might like to see it too.


Here was another attempt on the last outing to make something more from the situation at hand. The mallard duck was swimming into the area where the light from the sun was brightest and I knew by using a smaller aperture, some of the light reflections would be rendered as little stars. I also knew that if I exposed for the bright water, the duck would be underexposed, creating a silhouette. The light edge along the head and upper back were more than I hoped for. These things happen in real time, so you have to be able to anticipate what the subject is going to do. If I had a little more time to fidget with settings, I would have cranked the aperture to an even smaller setting which would have made even more twinkly stars.


This is a photo that I took simply because my wife has never been to the spot where I was filming and I wanted her to be able to see some of sights that can be seen from there. I thought the large number of craft in this marina interesting. It is another photo that begins to look very crunchy due to the distance and the amount of atmosphere between the far shore and the camera.


Here is another image taken to let my wife see what had happened. Just because it isn't an "arty" shot doesn't mean I can't give it a "treatment." I processed the photo to look similar to a cross processed photo and applied a subtle vignette to keep the viewers eye within the photo. It kind of gives it an "olden" type feel.

I watched a Bald Eagle fly straight out into the Bay. It flew a long ways and, as I often do, I simply watched it through the telephoto which is very much like looking through a pair of binoculars. It had almost reached a sailboat plying the Bay when it wheeled about, dove and then started flying back to shore. Two seagulls started chasing it initially, so I thought there was a good chance it had caught something. I am not sure the two guys on the boat ever saw the Eagle.


When the Eagle finally got back to shore, I took a couple more pictures hoping to get some idea of what it did or didn't pick up out there. It was quite a ways away when it passed me, so it isn't so easy to determine what it picked up. I can say it does not appear to be a fish. It appears to be something vegetable rather than animal.


Almost the first thing I saw when I initially arrived at the location, was an Eagle returning from out over the Bay. It was carrying something which I couldn't make out until after I got back home and looked at it on the computer. My guess is that it is the body of a seagull. whether the Eagle had killed the bird itself or was simply retrieving a body floating out on the water, I don't know. I'm sure seagull is on their menu.

So, seven photos, but only two were an attempt to make something more than just a straight snapshot. Seven photos out of 175 I kept from the morning. I also threw sixty in the trash for one reason or another. Most were not "art." Some will become material for future blogs.

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