Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A little bit of manipulation.....!

I know that back in the days before digital photography it was still very much possible to manipulate film images in the developing stages, I know because about a hundred years ago when I was young, my Dad and I had a darkroom set up and we would have great fun with the negatives before the printing stage. It's just so much easier now with all the different photo editing packages available. I took this shot at the marina yesterday and in the above view I like to think the water seems to lead your eye up towards the sky, whereas the exact same photo below with a bit of cropping, colour change and highlighting, I think draws your eye down the silvery path towards the camera..What do you think and do you also sometimes enjoy having a bit of a play with your images.....

34 comments:

  1. I know I do love all of your captures and admire your ability to do so much with them and I do love your first one! I had never had anything but disposable cameras up until four years ago when I began to play around with blogging and my son gave me a digital camera to encourage me. I do love it, but I haven't gotten beyond the basics. Consequently, I'm in awe of all that you do with yours!! Hope you week is going well, Grace!

    Sylvia

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  2. The b/w makes it somehow timeless. Nevertheless, the colour makes it warm a feeling ;)
    Only changes I make it turning some images into b/w, yet the remains as the colour ones, nearly straight out of the camera. Please have a good Wednesday.

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  3. Totally agree and yes absolutely!

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  4. I'm one of those who used to spend hours and hours in a darkroom developing film, then cropping, dodging and burning, fixing exposure, color, etc.

    I could not do with film what I can do with digital, and even if I could do it, it would take more time than I have left in this world!

    Yes, I play. I love to play. Photography is not science, but art. The camera plays, and I help out after the cart transfers the images to the computer.

    And I really like what you've done here. The top image is so much more exciting! Great job!

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  5. I like the top one best although like how you changed the whole impact of the shot. I play a bit but not to great deal past cropping and some colour & contrast manipulation. Great post Grace!

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  6. Isn't much of the difference in effects the low horizon in the top photo and the high horizon in the second?

    I do hardly any "artistic" editing. I crop, lighten or darken, sometimes sharpen, and that is it. I don't have enough time for the fancier effects.

    BTW, teddy bears for me? You don't really think so, do you? I want life-size bear sculptures. Either carved from a tree trunk or cast in bronze.

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  7. I prefer the b/w one (it's amazing that I can see 2 today!) Warming up again ........

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  8. They're two completely different images! A bit of well-thought out editing can do that.

    I usually only adjust the levels a little if the image is a little flat, occasionally I'll do a bit of cropping if I think it's necessary. I try to get what I want in-camera, rather than taking images without much thought and trying to make it into something later.

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  9. deux belles versions, avec une preference pour la premiere

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  10. I think they are both beautiful. I lost my Photoshop when my last computer crashed but I do love to work with photos when I have the chance.

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  11. You KNOW I been photo-playing!


    Aloha from Waikiki
    Comfort Spiral

    > < } } ( ° >

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  12. I agree and I didn't know we had so much in common. My dad also had a dark room and he would teach me how to do different things with just one negative. Now I do very much the same thing without all those messy chemicals. Isn't progress grand?

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  13. Bonza photos. I do like the 2nd photo classic B&W. Couldn't take a decent photo even if i tried really, really hard i'm just hopeless :-).

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  14. I think they're both good Grace but I lean towards the top pic. I'm not into a lot of artistic editing and don't even have photo-shop but I do crop most pics- just to tidy them up.

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  15. The eye falls on the larger part of the image - the sky in one and the water in the other. There is so little color in this that it is almost black and white anyway. I do agree that it is fun to tweak an image with software. I use paint.net as it is very powerful and free!

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  16. In this case I prefer the colour one but I do enjoy fiddling with my photos as you well know!

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  17. The first one is my favorite, it gives more the feeling of adventures, open skies.. But both are beautyful anyway.Haha, when we talk of dark rooms to our kids, they just can't imagine what it was!

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  18. Nice shot Perth....no, I don't play with my images now, but I remember vividly, like you probably, the smell of the chemicals in the darkroom in pre digital times....

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  19. I always play with the photos, I have to!

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  20. It is always difficult to choose the best one, it is a personal dicision. We cleaned up the attic and have thrown away all the bottles with chemicals, which were waiting there for years to be used...

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  21. Good manipulation, I like the one in BW. Arianna

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  22. I like them both, but I think the monochrome works best here ... what program/plugin do you use? And yes, I do occasionally play with my images .. just this morning I downloaded two shots that were terribly shaky/blurry and I use Topaz Labs Simplify plugin to make them both look a bit like paintings to hide the blur/shake .. I'll be posting them one of these days ..

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  23. Interesting change in effect. Julie and I use only iPhoto. We do not have the time to do something like Photoshop. The ease of cropping, and some enhancements certainly do improve the photos.

    Ansel Adams did extensive manipulation of the light and exposure on different sections of his photos, although obviously he had to do it in the darkroom and printing process. The "post work" of the image is part of the artistic process, in our view.

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  24. it is gr8 that in this day and age, we can tweak anything we want with our fotos and have to say that I like them both. ^0^
    but with my fotos, i usually do a bit of sharpening and saturation and that's it, other than that, it's mostly socc. ^-^

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  25. I think what you say about the two photos is true. I do enjoy paying around with some photos-just seeing if they look better in single colours or monochrome, or are improved with a drastic crop. Goes with the territory doesn't it? ;-)

    Chrissy at Manchester: a photo a day at Mancunian Wave

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  26. I started with a darkroom as well, sometime during the 2nd millennium. I only switched over to digital about 4 years ago, when I broke my good old analogical Leica. Now, I must have at least 30 or 40 photo editing programs, some of them professional. I'm actually teaching it.

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  27. Agree, Grace, it is very easy to manipulate images nowadays (and many people have got into trouble that way too ;-). I like playing around with images too and sometimes ending up with something very abstract!
    Each of your images above has its own charm and I look at them as quite different and separate photos (both lovely).

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  28. I would have loved to have grown up with the darkroom but I love how you can edit and play around with digital images these days. I think it's mandatory for most photographers, but then again, it depends on what you're shooting and whom you're shooting for. I like the first photo better. It seems as though that the colors stand out more than the one below.

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  29. Very nice, both ways! I'm not very good at manipulating my photos... think I don't really have the know how or right software :-)

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  30. Amazing! I felt like I had completely spun around..and changed direction.

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