Explosion:
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Good sunsets are rare in Alabama, at least around my usual haunts. But every once in a while, you get lucky, and things just all come together.
I had gone out to take a few photos, and was initially disappointed with the sky. I was facing east, trying to line up a tree, when I noticed an orange highlight on the back of my camera. I turned around, and saw this. It simply took my breath away, the feeling of energy and size and space was amazing. I couldn’t run back and switch to a wide angle, so I chose the region with the highest contrast, exposed for the clouds, and started shooting the panorama.
No wonder our sense of beauty is skewed.
(Of course, I kind of knew this, but still pretty crazy to see.)
Identity Crisis:
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Don’t worry, I’m not having an emotional breakdown. My financial identity was stolen over the past week, and I’ve been quite tied up between school and dealing with that. Still not over, so if you have any advice as to what to do I’d appreciate it.
As a result of this thievery, I got very angry, and last week decided to turn that anger into some photos, both to calm down and to maybe capture something about feeling out of control of my own social security number/bank account. (How I intended to get that into a photo, I don’t know.) I went into a room, snapped off a few photos, they all stunk. Horribly. I threw them into the computer and forgot about them for two weeks. But… last night I decided to see what I could do with them. This was the result.
It’s hard proof just how important post production is in this day and age. Here’s a progression of what I did. First, monochrome and levels, followed by dodge and burn a judicious crop. Still not the greatest self portrait ever taken, (the model isn’t that great) but at least it’s not worth tearing my eyes out over. Incidentally, all the work was in Aperture 2.0, not photoshop itself.
This got me thinking. I pondered about how the total image I project on the internet is 50% post production, just like this picture. I send out to the world what is me, and what I want to be me, and it gets jumbled up until it is what you get when you google Evan Travers. It’s not really an accurate image, really. After a year of making myself completely open and trying the whole open life/internet thing, I’m slowly limiting access to myself. Turning off notifications, unsubscribing, unfollowing… I guess you could say I’m trying to get quality over quantity but I’m really just trying to focus on the real things. I’ll still comment on your photos, but maybe not all of them. I’m going to still post photos. But not every day. Just a strategy.
Strobist: The original horrid photo was taken with one SB-900 with a Lumiquest Softbox III, above and to camera left. All other light sources were either non existent or dimmed just enough so that the camera could focus. There also was a white reflector to camera right, just enough to try and bring the left ear out and make a little of the left eye visible.
Crazy optical illusion… interesting to think about for photographers and other artists.
One really handy trick I actually wasn’t aware of for a long time is that most terminal systems feature an auto-complete. Simply press Tab when typing a word to complete the word, press…
Skylights:
This is in the amazingly cool building the Innovation Depot in downtown birmingham. I was there for the www.wordcampbirmingham.org conference, which was a blast and I learned alot.
I’m sorry I’ve missed commenting on so many photos… I’ve really been slammed the last week or so. Last week I found out my identity was stolen. I’m still sorting through that mess, so if anyone has any advice I’d appreciate it. I haven’t lost any money, but there are credit cards out there with my name on it… and things I never bought keep being shipped to the house. I’ve already canceled one movie club, two magazines, and one dietary supplement. It’s pretty annoying.
I’m still formulating what my flickr life will be like from now on… I’m thinking about setting a goal to go somewhere for the express purpose of shooting at least once a month… we’ll see. How have you guys been sparking your creativity lately?
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