Well, that makes three years in a row that I have been able to get in to this national juried photography show in nearby Louisville, Colorado (June 1-8, this year; see the Louisville Art Association website)…but each time it is a little bit harder. This time only one of my submitted images was selected–but at least one did!
The image that made the cut (above) makes a good study in the difference you can make in post-processing to get the image to fit what you had in your mind’s bloodshot eyeball. What I was seeing when I made the image is pretty close to what you see above.
The JPEG the camera spit out (with neutral in-camera picture settings) is quite a bit different and that is what you see here:
Starting with the RAW file, I cropped, reset the white balance, and adjusted the exposure, among other things–plus I cleaned up a few of those ubiquitous and silly sensor dust bunnies. The conversion to monochrome was done with the Nik plug-in, Silver Efex Pro 2.
The point is that the creative process runs all the way from the setup and making of the image, to the post-processing and printing. You, as the artist, can adjust things to fit your vision anywhere along the way. And, indeed, flashes of inspiration can occur anywhere along that entire trajectory.
Hmmm…maybe I should try a square crop, too…
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