Unfinished Bl…

Today was a nice day for Winter; fairly sunny and cool but not too cold.

These ideal conditions, combined with the feeling of artistic inspiration that has lately been beckoning to me as I’ve admired some nice photo blogs, resulted in me deciding to have a little fun and try my hand at the art of photography.

I went outside and took several pictures of the prettiest-looking tree I could find in the near vicinity.^[1]

Now, the camera which I have in my possession is a Nikon E4600. Not exactly a top-of-the-line model meant for taking super-amazing photos, although when given enough light, it has produced some very nice pictures for me in the past.

But I certainly was not expecting anything close to what the real experts can capture with their superior equipment and know-how.

And I was exactly correct. I came back inside to inspect the results on my computer, and most of the pictures ended up being blurry. The best of the bunch was this one, and even it was not that great:

But! I remembered something I had heard just days earlier from the mouth of a certain photographer whom I had been badgering with questions. It was something to the effect of “My pictures look horrible before I edit them.”

Now, surely this person could not have meant this “horrible”; after all, he/she has both a superior camera and the skill to wield it. But I thought I’d fire up GIMP and give it a shot anyway.

Boy, was I surprised what a little “levels” adjustment could do:

My mouth was hanging open as I adjusted the sliders to reveal a whole world of vivid color not present in the original image! Who would have known that simply adjusting the relative levels of brightnesses and darknesses in separate color channels could mimic the touch of King Midas?

When viewed full-size the picture still doesn’t look that great (you can only do so much with an entry-level point-and-shoot camera when the sun has begun to set) but it was still an amazing discovery to me.

I had to try this new trick on another seemingly dull photograph. I chose this one:

Adjusting only the “levels”, I came up with this:

I know not whence came those queer varicoloured lines which were thus amplified, but I think they make this tree-trunk look like a close-up of the eye of an alligator that has some kind of scary war-paint on…or something.

What thinkest thou who readest?

Before I close, it must be said that I greatly admire and respect all who are able to take such wonderful photographs that they need not be so heavily edited afterwards. But I am grateful to whoever discovered this “levels” business…and to the Creator for creating the beautiful subject featured in this photo-shoot!

Footnotes

1. ^ at which point my camera claimed that the brand-new rechargable batteries I had just charged were dead. The other ones I had didn’t work at all when I last tried them so I had just gone and bought these ones (on sale for really cheap and they even came with a nice charger) so now I’m really confused and think my camera might be what’s malfunctioning.