Photos and Raytracings: Lesser Landscapes

The stars are all actual stars in real locations, plotted based on color and magnitude information obtained from online star charts (the HYG database, which I found after trying several others, was exactly what I wanted). I was also working on a version with some land and pine trees, and perhaps someday I'll finish it.

I'm not actually entirely happy with the way the stars came out. This is likely because you just can't simulate the appearance of point sources with a picture; when I look at actual astronomy pictures, I don't find them particularly realistic either. Thus, while it's not a realistic imitation of the night sky, I think it's a reasonable imitation of a picture of the night sky.

[July 2002] I think perhaps the problem is that all the stars should be EXACTLY ONE PIXEL, regardless of image size. That'll be a bitch.

The odd vignetting is because I buggered the picture and there was a bloody great out of focus rock in the bottom left of the picture, but I liked it enough that I didn't want to just scrap it.

I went back to take another picture of the same area, but there was less water and the rocks were completely dry - no waterfall.

It's a tree. It's pretty colored. I took a picture of it. The picture looks pretty.

Actually, have a look at the slightly out of focus leaf in the foreground. Looks pretty bad, doesn't it? I've found that when you're somewhere in person, looking at it with two eyes (and thus depth perception), a scene where the most interesting object is behind others can look fine. However, once you close one eye (or take a picture), it doesn't look OK any more. Somehow depth perception makes it easier for objects closer to you to be "background" with respect to the main focus. With photographs, you can't have less important objects in front of the major scene.

It's another picture of a pretty colored tree. There are many like it but this one is mine.

Somewhere, it is written that All Photographers Must Have a Picture of a Hot Air Balloon. This is my favorite of the ones I have.

This picture was a *bitch* to get right, and took about four days to render. The lightning is bright cylinders to give it the visible effect, and is also a bunch of light sources to provide the halo. The clouds at the top are general overcast clouds.

This isn't quite a straight paste of some of the original colored parts back onto the greyscale image. There were some green leaves in front of the bridge, and I turned them red. I like it better that way. More true to the idea of having hand-colored a picture with two colors.

If you're curious, take a look at the Original Color Image and see how uninteresting it is compared to the BW version which has LESS information.

This picture is one of my favorites.

There isn't really much talent required to getting pictures like these. All you have to do is:

1. Own a camera
2. Own a tripod
3. Know of somewhere pretty
4. Schlep said camera and tripod around said pretty place on a 90°F, 90% humidity day.

I forgot walking. You must also be able to walk AND carry the tripod and camera, at the same time. You could put them in a bag, but those zippers can be vicious.

Oh, and you have to be willing to spend ridiculous amounts of time scanning in your negatives later, without getting so frustrated that you break something.

Front row, from left to right: cedar elm, American elm, green ash, narcissian oak, shore pine.

Second row, from left to right...

A journey of sixty feet begins with but a single step. If your steps are the same size as mine, that's about 26 inches. which is 0.66 meters. 6.6 billion angstroms. 2.6 million liters/acre. 6.7 microwattseconds per dyne!

This is an old fort in a state park in Maine. Sadly, I can't find my notes on which state park it was, but I'll update this when I find it.

Sadly, I had to fuck with the sky, which was just pathetic, and really ruined the picture. I've recently obtained a polarizing filter, which will hopefully save me some effort in digitally retouching skies.

This picture is OK, but nothing to write home about. Most of the bodies of water I was trying to take pictures of that sunset over were full of pond scum, so I had to take what I could get.

Before you read on, see if you can guess what this is a picture of.

...

The answer is that this utterly surreal picture was a one-second exposure out the window of a moving car. The top part is the sky, in which the same sunset as in the photograph above was occurring. The bottom part is random things we passed by the road.

Well, it's a pretty sunset. Keep in mind that for every picture like this that you see, there were half a dozen other ones taken a few seconds or minutes before or after, or with a different lens or orientation, which weren't as good.

In most of these pictures it's also possible to make out some detail in the trees as the picture is taken. I deliberately shift them all to black because I like it better that way. They don't look pretty, and they're just distracting.

I was at the Arboretum for four weeks in a row. Not once did I see hillsides full of pretty colored trees. The fall colors this year were absolutely horrible in New England. This picture was one of the best there was, and while it's certainly not something you'd put on a calender, I'm actually rather fond of it.

I took this picture a few minutes and about 20 feet away from the previous one. It's harder to explain why I like this one. It's possible that there's very little redeeming about the picture itself, and I just like it because I have good associations with forests late in the day lit with low-angle sunlight.

This isn't a good picture. The colors are great, but there's nothing interesting to focus on, and none of the parts of the picture stand out more than any of the other parts.

What I'd really like is something interesting in the foreground and this picture as the background. Imagine it and see if you agree with me. Picture it... a couple having sex in public, or a dog taking a dump, or a sign warning away swimmers because of the raw sewage... with this as the background. Isn't it beautiful?

This is where the last two pictures were taken.

When I go to the arboretum, I always give them a dollar and a half.

Copyright (C) 2007 by Terran Melconian. You may mirror this page for personal use. Images may be downloaded and printed. All other rights reserved.
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