More Easter Brightness

[kerravonsen]

Easter Sunday in Bright...

- we went to an open-air service in Centenary Park, put on by the local Church of Christ. It was good, but the boys (E and R) were misbehaving. (sigh)
- I walked down by Oven River in the park, taking photos with my new camera
- lunch all together in the gazebo; each of the three families brought their own stuff, but we all ate together.
- Easter Egg baskets were distributed (normally we would have a hunt, but it wasn't deemed suitable in this situation)
- S and I then went for a photographing walk together, trying to take advantage of the turn from sunny to cloudy (cloudy is better for photographs) but it did turn sunny again while we were still out. S was waxing forth on photo things, but alas, I wasn't familiar enough with my new camera (yes, I had read the manual, but not memorized it) so I couldn't do manual stuff on it, so I fell back on my usual "auto everything, and switch between macro and normal".
- got back, was quite hot, changed clothes.
- downloaded photos onto my laptop, trying to winnow them. I don't really know how the photos turned out, because the screen of my sub-notebook is too small to really see them well.
- invaded by youngsters who wanted to watch Doctor Who; we watched "The Unquiet Dead". I watched with half an eye, sorting out photos on my laptop in the meantime (putting labels on them).
- now people are getting ready for dinner, and I am sitting here with laptop minding the tables.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yay, you have a new camera!

[kerravonsen]

Yes, I decided I didn't want to go somewhere as photogenic as Bright with a camera that kept on switching itself off; you observed my frustration in NZ!

The new camera is more impressive than the old one, though it's still crap compared to what brother-in-law S has. It's a bit frustrating being told the joys of using a polarizing filter when one's camera isn't capable of using one. But his camera isn't all super-duper -- we both failed in trying to force our cameras to get some barbed wire into focus: the cameras kept on wanting to focus on what was behind the barbed wire. And it was nice talking photography.

When I said "I just see something I think is pretty and point and shoot", he said
"So you're not into the photo-journalism, not into political statements."

Which isn't what I meant at all, but thinking about it, I do have a political statement to make. My "political statement" is: don't miss the beauty all around you, even in such mundane places as suburbia.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have a much better camera and a polarising filter too. Look at these photos taken with one.

Is there any way of achieving that with GIMP or PS filters?

[kerravonsen]

Wow, those photos are incredible.

No,I don't think it's possible to get that effect with post-processing, because it's to do with the polarization of the light of the sky, which is data one loses once the photo is taken. I saw a tutorial once about blending two different photos together so that one could use the sky from one and the foreground from another, but that's more trouble than I want to go to.

There are effects one can get with post-processing, which I hadn't even considered, but talking with S I might give them a try. He was talking about some settings in his camera to "give the effect of different film stock" -- one normal, one B&W, and one "chrome", which tends to bring out the greens and yellows -- now, those kind of effects, like a colour filter, I think I could do in GIMP by having a colour layer in "overlay" mode, and perhaps varying the transparency to get subtle effects.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I asked Aline whether there was any post-processing done on the photos and she said that "he uses a polarising filter and nothing else".

I wonder if I could shoot through my sunglasses. Probably too dark, but I once got a great sunset doing that with a film camera.

[reveilles.livejournal.com]

I love that you have a new generation who clamour for Doctor Who. :)

Happy Easter!

[kerravonsen]

I love that you have a new generation who clamour for Doctor Who.

Yes, it's very encouraging. 8-)