Behold the Giant Toe!

I had a couple people asking me what that pic in the header was. It's my toe! Isn't it pretty?! It actually took me about 20-odd shots before I nailed the one I wanted. It was surprisingly difficult.

I wanted a quirky subject, something most definitely unChristmassy, in black and white.

Enjoy the Giant Toe for the rest of the month.

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Blowing his own horn

Don't you just hate people who do that?

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Yes, little miss, I do as you command and

buy you ice cream.
This little girl's forehead is ginormous. I'm surprised it's not covered with throbbing veins. Like

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Classics

Due to some kind of weird fluke that I've yet to figure out, my tv, when hooked up to my old dvd player, always shows movies in black and white. It's an excellent media, and because these movies weren't designed to be shot in b/w, I've been studying them to see what works and what doesn't. This particular image took me a few tries before I was happy with the tonal values.

Although dSLRs and some point n' shoot cameras have b/w mode, I don't suggest using it because images will typically come out flat and look fairly alike.

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Art is subjective. Even in photography

When I was in Colorado a few weeks ago, I visited a town that had a huge variety of homes. I was most interested in the Victorian-style homes and shot a few. I chose one of the pictures and ran it through the mass-spectrometer and...kidding. I played around with different features in photoshop.

Here's the near-original. I tweaked it slightly so that the picture wasn't tilted (for some reason, I almost always shoot at a slight angle). As you can see, it's a not bad picture. But it doesn't "sing" to me. It looks a bit washed out, partly because of the sky. The details to the sides of the house are a little distracting. I could crop them out, but it'd be hard to do that especially on the left side because the little house is clearly visible through the porch awning. If I cropped only on the right, the big house would be off-center, and I felt that did the photo disservice.

I ran it through a few easy steps to make the yellow pop a bit and made this photo a little more vignette. I also burned the edges of the frame a bit so that the houses to each sides weren't as obvious.

Here, I pushed the 70s feel a bit further. I like it. All it needs is a white border.

I took #2 photo, because I liked the vignetting and burning at edges effects - and wanted to keep that element in these new versions - and converted it to black and white. I think it works pretty well here.
Pushing the envelope a bit further. I deepened the contrast, making this photo a bit darker. Now the whites in this photo really pop out at you.
Why does this photo work? The trees serve to frame the big house and the balance of dark versus light helps keep your eyes centered.

What else could I do to improve this photo? If I had the time, I'd have gone back in morning when the trees' shadows wouldn't be a major player in this photo. Ultimately, I prefer the last two black and white photos, though I couldn't pick between the two - I like them both for different reasons.

What do you think? Which is your favorite and why?

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