Photos and Raytracings: Nature

This picture taught me something. It taught me that Kodak films saturate easily with red, and purples come out looking horrible. What you see is the result of several hours of manipulation to bring back the correct colors.

This is another picture which took a lot of work. The grain was really bad. I ended up spending hours drawing the border between the flowers and the background, and blurring each separately (and to different extents). I also played with the colors of the background slightly to make the flowers stand out more. What really makes the picture, though, is the spot of refracted light on the vase.

The flowers here are past their prime, but I really like the picture. Don't ask me why.

Everybody talks about "sweet dew", but I slurped the hell out of that leaf after I took the picture and it didn't taste very sweet to me. Poetic license my ass; at this rate I'm going to die of mushroom poisoning.

The composition of this picture is hardly original, but the execution of it is almost perfect. There's no elaborate studio lighting, either. The light was diffuse light coming in a window and skylight; the flowers are sitting on a piece of black felt on a chair.

Spiders don't bother me much. I don't let them run freely inside my living space, but I'm not afraid of them, the way I'm afraid of ants. Don't ask me why. I don't know. That's just the way it is. Maybe it has something to do with the infestation of ants which manifested itself when flying ants came out of the wall by the bedroom. Maybe that experience damaged me for life. But you never know. Maybe it's actually because I was read a traumatic bedtime story when I was three. You just can't tell with these things.

So anyway, enjoy the picture of the spider, and realize there are never going to be any pictures of ants. :)

I didn't get any pictures of pretty foliage at the arboretum, but I did get some other things. I have absolutely no idea what this plant is, but I think it's beautiful. They were only about two or three inches tall altogether.

I took this picture in the middle of a conversation with a friend. It went something like this: "so anyway, the fundamental insight of the last three years of my life is... ooh, shiny! can you hold that thought while I take a picture of these plants? Thanks. Here, have a truffle..."

There's nothing particularly innovative about this picture, but I think it's well executed for what it is. It's not really interesting enough to hang on the wall, but it would make an excellent computer wallpaper.

I made this picture in January, and I just now noticed it had it sitting around (in November), so needless to say I don't remember a whole lot about it.

Looking at it now, I think it suffers from the sameness of the red, and the lack of variation in coloring.

It's just a leaf on the pavement.

With a tiny little rotted spot near the tip.

According to the camera's meter, this picture was a stop and a half overexposed. I decided to take my chances, however, because I wanted at least a 1s exposure to get the water to blur like this. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Three cheers for print film!

I found this leaf lying on the ground one day. It followed me home. I named it "Bob". Sadly, Bob ran off with a pine cone called Sheila, and I haven't seen him since. This picture is all I have left.

The best florists around here are the stalls in the subway stations, which is where these flowers came from. When I get flowers, I get to enjoy the flowers, and then I get to enjoy them again when the pictures come back.

This gladiolus was in my mother's garden. This is a digital picture; the large DOF of the digital camera makes it very well suited to macro pictures like this.

You might think this is just another picture of a leaf lying on the ground, but in truth it is deeply symbolic of the cycle of life in which we come into existence, develop, and finally die and fall, briefly leaving a colorful memory and then fading into dust.

People don't buy pictures because of artistic merit, they buy them because they match the decor. This picture is my attempt to fill in the "pastel orange" and "pastel green" range of my offerings thereby increase the number of potential customers. I'm sure I'll make at least 10% more now that this picture is available.

This picture, I think, is a good example of why I continue to use film. I don't think it could have been taken on today's digital cameras without either the directly sunlit parts washing out or the shaded parts becoming too muddy to distinguish.

I am not entirely satisified with this picture for reasons I cannot articulate at this time.

When you take pictures of trees in the tree museum, you can look at the tags to find out what they're called! I assure you that I would not have been able to identify fothergilla otherwise.

This picture also looks reasonably good in black and white. I ultimately decided I liked the color version better, for the green, but it was close. B&W version avaialable on request.

Queen Ant's Lace with no ant! The nerve!

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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