Tom McCreary, APSA, MPSA
December 2020 - My cold friend
Original
Original 2
About the Image(s)
This was taken on October 27 this year. The second of 3 days of the most destructive and earliest ice storms in the state history. It would have been a bad ice storm at any time of the year but was especially bad because it was very early in the winter and the leaves were still on the trees. Lot more surface area for the ice to collect on and bring the trees down. The older neighborhoods have large trees and above ground power lines. Of course, the ice caused the trees and tree branches to fall on the power lines and bring them down. At one time, they said that 2/3rds of the people in Oklahoma City were without electricity. I live in a duplex in an over 55 community that is about 4 years old and
has buried power lines and smaller trees. I did lose power 2 different times for about 2 days total When up to 2 inches of ice took down some major powerlines in the area were taken down. I saw several small birds flying around and landing in the trees behind my duplex. I got out my
Nikon D500 and a Tamron 100-400mm lens and took some photos of them out the window. It was raining and dark and the image was taken at 1/2000th second, f6.3, ISO 1600. The camera was on a tripod. I used Topaz Denoise to get rid of some of the noise, added a catch light to the eye, used levels to add more contrast and reversed the image. I used B&W because the image was almost monochrome as it was.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
9 comments posted
I have a question about flipping. So often we flip just the other way--why does this flip work?
Great story about the terrible ice storm. I love to travel the world with all of you through these stories, both good and bad. It reminds me of the Great Ice Storm of 1998 in Eastern Canada; here is the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm#:~:text=The%20North%20American%20Ice%20Storm,and%20bordering%20areas%20from%20northern
Posted: 12/01/2020 23:36:54
I fully agree that Russ's lighter version improves the image quite a lot.
As to your question about flipping an image, Stephen - interesting question. I feel that some times it is easy to decide whether an image is more "natural" seen from the opposite side. But, for me, I have not seen any rule that makes it easy for me to decide whether to flip or not. Tom's image of the bird looks just as natural seen from the original side. In fact, I like the bird looking to the right, better. And Tom, to your comment on portraits - I briefly looked through some of my favorite portraits: It seems to be a mix of which way the person is facing. Many of them facing right. Could be a coincidence, of course. I am by no means an expert.
As to reading from right to left - In Arabic, Hebrew and some Central Asia languages, they do - while in the rest of Asia, including India, China, Japan they all read horizontal from left to right. In the old days, Chinese and Japanese read vertical from top to bottom, from right to left. But that's long time ago.
I guess it comes down to each individual's preferences, and what we feel pleases the eye the most... Interesting.
Posted: 12/07/2020 10:25:39
Rules for portraits are there to be broken! Sometimes it works LtoR and sometimes it's better RtoL. Go for what pleases you and hope others agree. Posted: 12/11/2020 09:28:30
