Every picture is a memory. Every time we press the shutter on the camera we are freezing a moment of history so we can preserve it forever. It sounds monumentous doesn't it, but it's not: Facebook will certainly tell you otherwise. I log on each day to see the myriad of photos that my so-called 'friends' vomit onto my homepage. Not only do people upload a sequence of the same picture - I have two of them so why not use them - but the other people in the picture will also post their versions of it. The result? Monster albums clogging up the internet providing the CIA with plenty of material should anyone need blackmailing in the future...


It is an age-old question, though. How do we make our holiday photos interesting to the general public? How do we step away from the necessity to have 'been there' to really appreciate someone else's pictures? And, while we're at it, how can we remove this insane fashion for de-tagging and portraying this hideously false image on Facebook? There is no hard and fast solution - no tried and tested method to solve this, but I think I may have hit upon a compromise.


May I invite you to read on...

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Motion Picture AND Photoshop Frippery!

Back in the early days of this blog I wrote two posts: one was about movement in pictures - blurred edges instead of catching something in suspended animation; the other was about the fun you can have by fettling your pictures in Photoshop (or the like). I love experimenting with different effects on my camera or in Photoshop: I love taking the mediocre pictures and making them into something really special just by messing around with something as banal as the contrast.

When I went to the Belgian Grand Prix last year I took some bad pictures. Really bad pictures. I tried to capture the movement and failed. I tried to capture them in suspended animation and failed. My only option was to drag them all into Photoshop and try to bring about a miracle.

 This was one of my pictures. Poor colour, no real definition, not the kind of thing you'd really want to hang on your wall. Photoshop was my only solution to haul this poor piece of photography away from its gloomy fate in my recycle bin...

I'm pretty proud of the finished outcome, but then again I love pictures like this. I'm a big fan of pop art and bold blocks of colour: they really are the pictures I'd hang on my wall - in fact I just might get that one printed.

One of the photos I took when I was with my cousin in Formby was one of these awful washed-out images that wasn't really going to win any awards, or even just wall space. I introduced it to Photoshop.
It's not the best image I've ever come out with, but it's certainly better than the original. It's not destined for my wall, but I've maybe saved it from the recycle bin for the time being...

Road Trippin'
Formby, England, 2010
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,
Location: Formby, Merseyside, UK

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)