Terran Melconian: Landscapes

This picture is "cooked". By this I mean the sort of thing that Martha Stewart does in her accountant's office, not the soft of thing she does in the kitchen. When I was actually there, it looked more like this, but thanks to the Miracle of Technology, I was able to fuck with it until it actually looked interesting, instead.

I have no interest in "artistic integrity." Raytracing purists (of which I used to be one) are apalled when anything photographic is included. Photographic purists are apalled when one manipulates the image on a computer in any way. I'm not a purist. I'm just an amoral bastard who wants shiny things to hang on my wall.

You better keep your kids away from me.

In case it wasn't obvious, that's the moon, not the sun.

This picture reminds me of a scene from an old grainy black and white movie. The next thing you know, the camera will tilt down, and there will be a couple of people having a whispered conversation in a graveyard...

It's clear that what makes this picture is the color of the yellow sunlight on the trees. Well, that and the wide angle lens.

Rayleigh scattering is your friend.

This was the best fall foliage picture I took in the entirety of 2002. The sky has been artificially blued, as I often find myself having to do with skies around here. The tree, however, is completely honest.

There's obviously nothing particularly interesting about this picture. It's designed to be aesthetically pleasing in fairly standard and non-innovative ways, and I think it succeeds reasonably well at that.

I call pictures like this the "shiny object" pictures. I don't dislike making them. I think they look good too. I'm not a Real Artist who thinks that creating anything that doesn't have a deep emotional connection is selling out. However, it does sometimes make me sad that most people seem to like these pictures better than the ones I think do demonstrate some sort of inspiration or actual vision.

This is the sort of picture you can't set out to take. You take pictures like this because you happen to be somewhere and have a camera with you. Of course, this means that this picture involves actual vision and/or inspiration, so it will therefore be much less popular than the cooked pretty colors.

Here's something you may not have realized about black and white pictures - they tend to be much higher contrast than color. The contrast on black and white pictures is often quite unrealistically high, and yet it looks good in black and white, whereas it would just look oversaturated and dumb in color. If you're trying to electronically convert your images to monochrome, and wondering why they don't look like you expect them to, try increasing the contrast, and don't be afraid of throwing away information at both the high and low end.

Now we're back to standard pretty colors again. If you're curious what this picture looked like before I darkened the sky, you can look and see. You can argue that altering the sky like this is somehow "dishonest" if you want, but please don't argue it with me. My objective with pictures like this is to make something that looks good, and I'll do whatever I think is useful towards that end. As it happens, I didn't have to do anything at all to the colors of the trees, but I would have if I had thought it would be useful.

Don't obsess about pictures like this. Look at them and enjoy them. These pictures are not intended to be matted and put in a glass frame. These pictures are intended to be printed for $5 or less and attached to your wall with poster putty.

This picture was taken from the top of a small hill I'd hiked up while visiting my friend Jace in Maine. This picture is good without being interesting; it's the sort of picture you use as a computer wallpaper and find soothing and not distracting.

This is the best "pretty colored trees" I took this year. You'd better jnjoy it; I went through 5 rolls of film to get this. I'm not sure I like the white sky in the corner, so I also have a version which is cropped a little more.

and this is the best picture of an individual tree. I had to make a second trip to take this picture, as the first time I was there the sky was overcast; I think a blue sky is almost a requirement for good "fall trees" pictures. When the sky is white, you usually need to exclude it from the pictures.

Warning for those with slow connections: the larger version of this image is about twice as large as usual (200k instead of 100k), apparently due to the detail in the leaves which doesn't compress well.

This picture is here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I like trying to take interesting black and white pictures of things which are traditionally done in color (forests, sunsets, etc.) for the challenge of it. Secondly, I like the "tree museum" feel of the label on the tree.

In spite of all that, I still think it's a second-rate picture.

This is my second-best picture of fall trees, and I think it's a fairly distant second. 2003 was a better year for color than the previous two, but I still wouldn't say it was great.

Cemeteries usually give me the creeps, but I'm told that other people don't mind them half so much as I do, so I'm putting up this picture because of the excellent colors. In fact, the white of the gravestones makes the picture a little more interesting by having something there other than just trees.

I still think pictures of cemeteries are disturbing and depressing, but hey, at least it's pretty while it's being disturbing and depressing.

This picture is one of the first batch I'm uploading from my digital camera instead of traditional film. Digital has a lot of limitations, but I think this picture has turned out well. It's a very simple picture, but nonetheless I like it.

It looks peaceful and serene, doesn't it? Enticing, even. Pity the Charles River is full of raw sewage.

A friend of mine, when viewing this picture, commented that it seemed like it came from somewhere further south - but no, it's from Massachusetts. That, you see, is why the lifeguard chair is empty - the lifeguard froze to death earlier in the afternoon.

Mmmmmm.... Pond scum....

I drove by this scene on the way back from Bar Harbor; I don't even remember the name of the town in which I took it.

Shortly before stopping to take this picture, we'd had some automotive troubles which resulted in the battery being drained, so I was hurrying to take this picture while the car idled, somewhat low on gas, because we weren't sure the battery was charged enough to start it again if we shut it off.

This picture was taken near Thunder Hole. I wasn't there at the right time to hear the thunder, but the visuals were great anyway. I was even lucky enough to have the lens cap on the camera when the big wave got us soaking wet! What more could I ask for?

Speaking of Thunder Hole, am I the only one who expects that if I were to look at "thunderhole.com" I'd find a disgusting porn site? I might be wrong, though; I bet somebody that "perfectimplants.com" would turn out to be a porn site, and it didn't resolve.

The dog featured in this photograph, Mr. Slobbers, is not a professional model. He was not compensated in any way for his appearance here. Mr. Slobbers requests that, should you wish to send a token of appreciate for work, you make a contribution in his name to the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Cute Puppies (MSPCCP).

If you would like to reach Mr. Slobbers, you can write to him via his agent, care of the Happy Days Dog Kennel and Day Spa.

This is a picture of approximately where I was standing when I took the previous picture.

Belfast is another town I drove through on the way back from Acadia. We stopped and had lunch on that picnic table, and then I decided it was sufficiently picturesque that it deserved a photograph.

Belfast is not exactly a large town. I used to have a friend who lived there, and a few years back he reported on the major controversy surrounding the decision to install a traffic light at the major intersection in the center of town. Some people were happy because it meant that their town was an up-and-coming place with modern technology, but others were sad because it means the Big City was encroaching. In the end, the traffic light was finally installed. Maybe next they'll get something really decadent like a grocery store.

2007 Update: From 2005 to 2007 I ended up dating someone from Belfast. The sex was amazing, but the Belfast pictures were never as good as this one. Also, they do have a grocery store - they used to have two, but the non-chain one went out of business.

This was taken during a visit to a friend in Rochester, NY. The fall colors in NY were better than anything I'd seen at home.

This picture is also one of the most retouched I've presented; there was originally a large tree front and center, which was painstakingly removed because I thought it interfered badly with the lines of the water.

This was taken in the same park, which I'm completely blanking on the name of right now. It was swarming with tourists, and I suppose one can see why.

Back to the good old Mt. Auburn Cemetery for this one, which hardly even looks like it's full of dead people from this perspective! The 24mm lens, used here, is the widest I have. I'm sure Scott would object to the tilt of the building, but I think the tree is rendered very well. Perhaps I should try a Widelux for pictures like this next time.

I'm pretty sure I like this picture, but I'm not completely certain. I think I would be happier if the water were more visually distinct from its surroundings.

I do not recommend the Scenic Overlooks in the white mountains. I found them to have a rather poor view overall, and this picture of the overlook itself, along with some overlookers, was far more interesting than any of the pictures of the mountains. Give the overlooks a miss and get out of the car and walk around.

See, if you get out of the car and walk around, you'll see things like this!

Sunrise over the beach! Taken on Velvia (E6), with high contrast and nice colors. I don't have a record of the details, but it was almost certainly taken with my Series E 50mm lens, which has almost no flare.

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