"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

T. S. Eliot
Burnt Norton




Friday, July 30, 2010

Luxembourg Gardens

(This is an edit of an earlier post. I decided to use a 2-exposure HDR, rather than the 3-exposure posted earlier. I think it gives richer colors and better focus--without inhibiting the artificiality of the scene)


I have been playing with High Dynamic Range imaging (HDR) to capture the luminescence in both the bright and shadowy part of a scene. Sometimes the results can look "painterly," as some commenters have noted. Sometimes it can look otherworldly--unreal. This picture, the product of two bracketed shots, was taken of a grassy area in front of a sunny area--all in the Luxembourg Gardens. I think I like the way the picnickers seem to have been dropped into a scene they really don't belong in.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Barcelona

What luck to be in Barcelona the evening (May 16, 2010) their soccer team won the league championship. Canon 40D; Shutter: 1/40; Aperture, f/7.1; ISO, 1600.

Magic (La Palma, Canary Islands)

I had maybe three seconds prep time for this picture. Walking up a Sunday street in La Palm, Canary Islands, I saw this lady approach the "magic window." Poorly framed and lighted, it still seems a worthwhile image of belief in more than we see as we hurry along. Canon 40D; shutter speed: 1/80; aperture, f/7.1; ISO, 100.

Sunset, Mid Atlantic

This is an HDR image, taken pretty literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on a cruise ship from San Juan, PR to the Canary Islands. Three separate bracketed shots combined to make the image.

Sunrise/Moonrise, Zabriskie Point

The titled image is an HDR image I worked on while watching soccer. I usually combine three images for HDR, but this time I just used two--one properly exposed and one under-exposed (I was trying to get the moon to show up better. The HDR software I used is called Photomatix.