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julielivingstone

~ It isn't always about getting what you want. Sometimes it's about wanting what you've got.

julielivingstone

Tag Archives: photography

Random Thoughts and Other Stuff

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

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competition, Fremantle, garden, photography, weather, writing

I know I’ve been really slack at posting when I come back to the WordPress site and none of it is familiar! OK, that’s not entirely true, some of it looks the same, but other bits seem totally different. When did that happen? Obviously I haven’t been paying enough attention.

More attention than the person who sent me one email recently though. To be fair, the email wasn’t directed just at me, it was a bulk mailing from a list I subscribe to. Touting a webinar on ‘better blogging’ or something like that. They lost me in the first sentence though, which read “Weather you blog for family and friends, or to promote your business…”. Their spelling mistake, not mine! Seriously, if you are going to promote yourself as advising people on how to write, please spell check more effectively than that!

OK, rant over. What else has been happening? I sent my entries off to the Sydney Royal, and I know that this year they arrived in time, because I tracked them on Australia Post. The show starts in two days, so I guess the judging is happening about now, but I’m not sure when the results come out. I’m not expecting anything great, just pleased with myself that this year I got the entries there in time. I hope at least to get to know the judges’ comments, that was one of the most instructive bits about entering some things in the Perth Royal Show a couple of years ago.

I’ve been busy working on a couple of other things, and also decorating my bedroom, as well as trying to keep the garden tidy. We had rain (the first for many weeks) about 10 days ago, and the weather is getting cooler and more pleasant, so that I can raise some enthusiasm about gardening again. I ordered some spring bulbs, so I shall have those to plant in a week or two. I have promised myself I’m going to try to look after them this year, so that hopefully they will flower for more than one year, instead of just vanishing after the first season. I ordered Dutch irises, anemones, ranunculus (ranunculi?), hyacinths, freesias, bluebells, and a few other things I’d never heard of before, but which looked good in the photo! Optimism springs eternally – I guess that’s pretty much the point about optimism, it’s always there.

Also spent a weekend in Fremantle recently, and took this photo, which I quite like. Although, it’s probably hard to take an ugly photo of boats, they’re generally attractive things.

Boats in Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour

Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour

There was also an exhibition of sculptures on Bather’s Beach, I think I liked this one the best.

Sculpture on Bather's Beach Fremantle, Portable Self Support Machine by Claire Bailey

Portable Self Support Machine by Claire Bailey

I’ve often thought it would be nice to have something like that in the garden – what do you think?

 

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On clouds, photography, and truth or falsehood

08 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

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clouds, falsehood, photography, truth

Photo editing. In a previous post I included a photo I had recently taken of some storm clouds. I wasn’t particularly happy with the picture, as is often the case the picture didn’t really show the scene as I remembered it. A couple of people commented on it, and one said it just needed a bit of editing. This for some reason is something I never think of doing. That’s not strictly true, I had already cropped it to get rid of some powerlines, which counts as editing. I also sometimes use the red-eye removal feature in my camera software. But I never think of changing the colour, lightening or darkening a shot, or anything like that. I really don’t know why. I have basic software for doing so, and in fact I have Photoshop, which I have used a bit, but is so powerful that I feel it’s a bit like using a pneumatic drill when you want to put up a poster.
However, I looked at the photo again, and did do some manipulation. I’m not yet up to speed with all the terminology, and particularly the logic thereof. Why does it keep talking about curves, when what changes is not the lines, straight or curved, but the tones, highlights etc? Still, here below is the original shot:

and here is the re-vised version
I don’t really know how I did it, I just played around until the trees in the foreground were lighter, and tried not to lose the definition in the clouds, they have that lovely billowing look round the edges.
This exercise got me thinking. It used to be said that ‘the camera never lies’, and that may have been true, but is certainly not with the technology there is today. At least, the camera maybe a little bit truthful, but the computer and it’s software can be as false and perfidious as you like. In this situation, the picture I took with the camera, which was reasonably truthful, did not really match my remembrance of the shot, which was presumably therefore not entirely accurate. It is certainly the case that the human brain is selective in remembering elements of a scene, gives more prominence to some than to others, and this is surely often the reason why photos are not as good as you think they should be. All I have done is change the photo to be more like I think I remember the scene, so who is to say which is truth and which is falsehood?
I saw some other beautiful clouds recently while driving, and whilst I was trying to figure out a safe way of getting off the highway I was on and stopping to take pictures, I realised I didn’t have my camera with me anyway. Must try and remember to carry it more often! I’m annoyed at myself really, because I don’t recall ever having seen clouds quite like them. They were a bit like this one here but lots of them scattered evenly all over most of the sky, as if somebody had taken a brush full of white paint to it. I’ve done a quick Google and I can’t find a picture of anything similar.

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