| On
my way to the computer with my breakfast (banana/soy
milk/honey/polyethylene glycol smoothie) and ritual morning espresso, I snagged my Pentax K100D on a whim, thinking (or more likely pronouncing aloud) that I probably would have no use for it, but I'd have it just in case. Shortly after getting the computer running and diving into my mostly empty email, I noticed the patterns the sunlight was making through the blinds on the wall and ceiling. The day before I'd made a couple of successful shots in the afternoon of just rays of light on the wall. These were even more exciting rays. So I shot several shots from various angles with a Tokina 28-mm lens (35-mm equivalent would be 44 mm), and knew before even downloading them (or is it uploading?) that I had something good for a change. I chose five finally and processed them in the photo editor for brightness and contrast - enabling more of the light rays to be visible than to the naked eye, or at least my naked eye. I didn't do any other editing, except to scale the images down; they look better smaller rather than larger. I believe this is the best work I've done since the infamous Boats series long ago on 35-mm film. I've rarely been so pleased with something I've made. Note that there are a few spots that appear to be dust on the camera sensor. I was sure that was it, but I checked the sensor and it was clean. The spots are areas of the textured paint on the wall and ceiling that stand out. I could probably (and laboriously) remove them with the editor, but I feel that would be cheating. There's a fine line between legitimate retouching and altering an image. I generally dislike, and sometimes outright loathe, altered images - which doesn't mean I might not make some now and then. Like them or not, I feel strongly that any altered image should be clearly labeled as such. Retouching means getting rid of something that itself alters the image (dust spots; digital speckles and lines if you're lucky enough to be able to get rid of them). I don't consider brightness/contrast adjustment to be objectionable alteration, since the subject matter remains clearly "itself." |