Little Bang Theory

With And Without. May 18, 2009

Here’s a shot I took at the end of the day, when the light was just skipping across the surface of things.  There were these odd, bud-like wildflowers rising on elegant stalks in this cemetery up in the hills, and I had to pull over and try to get that image.  Sorry to not know the mame of the wildflower (though “weed” would be widely accepted for such an unknown species.)  I’ll look it up.

Anyway, the photo did indeed capture the drama inherent in the light:

and I dug it.

But I’ve lately been playing with my images a bit, and in particular, I’ve been sadisticly  enjoying stripping them of a goodly amount of their colour, rendering them “washed;” not black and white, but drained of their messy reality and rendered as ghost/surrogate images, with a different feel and intent:

I like this effect; it seems to pare things down to their skeletal forms without losing all attachment to reality.

Let me know if I overdo it with this technique – I’m trying to keep it to situations where it’s actually a value-added thing rather than just another way to look at a photo.