Week 16 – Light and Color

This week I decided to play with light and color.

With this first image, I desaturated the colors, used some color toning, and then turned up the exposure and highlights to give the image a high key look. The effect is to exaggerate what struck me about the actual scene, which was the pale, watercolor-like quality.  Part of the point was to isolate the color of the one branch in focus.

In the second image, I found the colors distracting. So “playing” meant removing the color and turning the image black and white. I then added a bit of color toning, some yellow-orange in the highlights and blue in the shadows, just enough to see if you’re looking for it.

The images of grass in the morning sun play with color a bit less. I used a saturated film style, based on Fuji Velvia, a slide film with strong contrast, rich saturation, and rich greens. I also played around a bit in the out-of-focus and in-focus areas, with an eye to enhancing the light and hues.

Finally, in something completely different, I did a quick re-photographing of a scene in the village of Ada, near Grand Rapids. At work in the archives (well, online from home), I came across a picture of “downtown” Ada in the 1920s (I think). So I re-photographed the scene and posted this to the Heritage Hall Facebook page. I did not try to figure out and use the same length of lens, so the frame of the modern photograph is not quite the same as the one from the 1920s. But close enough.

This is the heart of what we might call “Old Ada.” There’s a lot of recent new building just north of here, in a “New Ada” of sorts.

This week, for the first time, I felt some strong cabin fever. Maybe next week I’ll get out of my yard and find somewhere else to photograph, where I can still be socially distant.

Stay safe, everyone.