February 3rd: Dried hydrangea blossoms in the front yard
3rd February 2008
I think the hydrangea blossoms are almost as pretty in the winter as they are in the summer and they might make an even more interesting photograph. I spent about an hour walking around my neighborhood, hoping for the sunshine the weathermen promised. The clouds did make some interesting patterns on the lake, though. I shot 47 frames today, so there’s one more day beyond the requirement of 29.
I have been turning more and more of my photos into black-and-white. I’m quite surprised since it seems like colors draw me to make a picture more than anything else but then I find myself in Lightroom or LightZone thinking that the color is distracting. Even the picture I chose today is very much like a toned black-and-white rather than a color picture (though I was attracted specifically to the golden-brown color of the dried blossoms).
Through a route I can’t retrace at the moment (though I’m pretty sure I started from Doug Plummer’s blogroll) I found the pause | to begin blog. There is a well-written post that, among other things, talks about the role of color in art photography: "One of the main culprits of boring color photography that seems to be everywhere these days is [the] fact that the color has nothing to do with the image." As a nice bonus, there are several examples of good color photographs and some analysis of why they work.
I took a photo of a natural gas access cap in the road and my first impulse was to treat it as black-and-white. But Dawn pointed out how much more she liked the color version and how the color made the debris around the cap seem like confetti and the gas cap like an Olympic medal. In this case, as in every one where visual sensitivity is involved, she’s right.
Shooting and processing notes
Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at at 40mm (yeah! I finally got it all the way to the long end for a change), f4, 1/250 at ISO 400. I simply adjusted the white balance in Lightroom and then applied the "Hard" style in LightZone.
Photo a Day 2008 Links
Photo a Day 2008
Photo a Day 2008: February
Flickr: Collection: Photo a Day 2008
Flickr: February 2008 Photoset
Flickr: February 2008 Extras Photoset
February 4th, 2008 at 5:50
That is a stunning picture! I love the depth.
You probably don’t remember me, as we didn’t really know one another, but I grew up in Etowah and lived next door to your grandmother in Seven Cedars. I stumbled across your blog when I was looking for pictures of Etowah on Flickr last year.