Photo by BdMiller
For a while now. I believe it was late in the summer, while we were visiting my parents in southern Delaware, when I grabbed this shot of the setting sun. I remember standing out near the bay, off a wooden dock near a restaurant. We were heading in with the folks for a few drinks and some dinner, when I slipped out quickly to take a photo of this awesome sunset. All I had with me at the time was my phone. This was taken with an iPhone 6, and unfortunately they take crappy low light pictures. I Later that night, I got overly excited went a little edit happy. During my intense edit session (most likely trying to correct the awful iPhone picture) I lost the original; unable to revert..nothing in the recently deleted. Oh well, this happens to us all eventually. No worries though, the version I did have left on my phone looks okay as long as it doesn't get stretched out too much. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a lot of ‘noise’ in the photo.
I have to say, the clouds on this particular evening displayed a tremendous amount of definition. The light was highlighting and shading all of the nooks and crannies is a really cool way. Just as fast as the colors appeared, they were gone.
Battles with perfectionism, and my fight not to care as much about creating perfect things. You can find that post Here I consider myself a creator of ‘things’. Sometimes I paint, sometimes I grab the Canon Rebel T1i digital, other times I shot film, and on the rare or not so rare occasion I will write something creatively. So this is why I consider myself a creator. With this comes self doubt, self criticism, and the insatiable want to be perfect or create almost perfect art. I’m not looking for a copout inorder to put out pieces quickly, with obvious signs that no effort was involved when creating it. No. What I am looking to do is relieve some of the stress I place on myself. This is a good thing, because today I am sharing a photo that is not all that perfect. What is perfect though, is my memory of that sunset. It was a real beauty and I wish all of you could have been there to see it.
I can move on to what I did. I made a black and white version of the photo, then altered it in several monochromatic ways. By the time I edited, applied filters, cropped, adjusted the intensity, yada yada.. In the end the, “almost”, original and black and white versions are still my favorites. Second to them was the monochromatic blue version. Something about the shade of blue.. It’s electric in a way. I usually view sunsets as being warm in the temperature of the colors displayed. The blue is not what first comes to my mind, so in a way it is intriguing to my senses.
That I never use but always see sitting way down from the other edit tools. I even tried that one today and it came out looking like one of those Rorschach tests or what I call ink blot tests.
I’m not saying what I see in this photo..I’d rather not be analyzed. Hehe.
The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning.
[Source}(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test)
Just playing around with this sunset picture, and learned something in the process. I learned that it doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter that I lost the original picture. It doesn't matter that the picture is blurry and out of focus. It doesn't matter that I have nothing perfect to deliver here. What does matter is that I was there, alive, breathing, and enjoying that spectacular moment in time (and I had fun). I am sure if this wasn’t just a hobby and it was my bread and butter, then this post would be written in an entirely different light. haha.
About this silly sunset photo, with some other variations on it. I played with the lighting, intensity, color and softness of the shot.
