Thursday, June 21, 2007

Black And White #8



The originals of these, of course, are in color. I liked them, but they weren't very exciting. I liked the high contrast though.

Now that I'm getting a bit better with my black and white conversions, I remembered these and went back and tried to work a little magic on them.

Well, I like 'em.

They are some sort of palmetto or something palm-like that are growing in front of my favorite Brevard County Public Library branch. Someone cut off all of the points ath the ends, and went a little farther inward on them and cut these fronds into circles.

I love the hazy focus look that Anna of Anna's Photo of the Day, and John of My Viewfinder do with their photos, but I couldn't get a hazy focus on these that I liked. I was wondering why, and it hit me that the good Orton process looking photos are the ones that have some humanity in them, or are a beautiful scene to begin with. I'm thinking there's nothing inherently beautiful or human about these trimmed palmettos. Maybe that's why the Orton process looks goofy to me on them.

(Warning, Rant ahead: I thought these looked kinda nifty, though I suspect they're really trimmed this way to keep some knucklehead from poking themselves and either complaining or suing the library. You can't underestimate folk's stupidity and vindictiveness these days. End of rant.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I quite like these - remind me of 50's science fiction films.... or the Japanese godzilla movies.

Anna said...

Thanks for the compliment John....

I love these...they look like paper folded up.

:) Have a good weekend!

Pat said...

Anna, you took the words out of my mouth. I thought that they looked like paper too.

John, I like your photos too!


(Thanks for posting on my blog. Do you have Indian Paintbrush where you live? The Indians used to grind it up to make the orange colour that they used to paint on the rocks.)

CG said...

Loved the rant...and I like your photos too :)

Anonymous said...

I like these too John. Great in black and white. I also enjoyed the rant. But the trimmed palms make an unusual shot...so one good thing has come out of lawyers.

Have a great weekend.

Mike

John Roberts said...

I would never have recognized these for what they are. Shame on whoever butchered them! on the other hand, your B&W treatment came out well. You made good use of the textures with the high contrast treatment.

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

looked like Japanese fans to me....love the crispness of the shots..

Meg said...

Untrimmed, the tips brown quicker, too, I think... But are you sure these are not the origami fan you asked me to send you? Hee hee. Thank you for visiting my blog, John.