Opinions…

I wonder, given that at least two major sports are going into the post-season, if we’re getting stuck into a spot where we’re getting too oppositional these days. Don’t get me wrong, trash talking isn’t all that bad, if done with respect for the other side; there’s something to be said for realizing that we’d do the same if we were in their shoes, given the same situation (I believe it was Abe Lincoln who often said this), but when we get so divisive, especially on other, more serious issues, there’s a good chance that it’s that much harder to calm ourselves down afterwards. We see this with journalists taking sides, getting carried away in the hype, and then just reporting from one side, instead of looking for context; it’s like we’re still just thinking of only what’s right in front of us instead of digging deeper, something I’m guilty of more times than I care to admit.

With photography, opinions & divisiveness are all too easy to come by and, I guess, it’s because opinions are like appendages (everyone’s got them). We tend to think we can’t be good at it unless we’ve got the latest & greatest gear, something that we’ve all got to fight against, or at least I’ve come to believe. Personally, I think it’s because we’ve gotten to the point that we’re told, by the mainstream, that we’ve got to focus on ourselves or the physical community around us by showing off our material means above all else or we’re not doing all that good. I wonder if it’s because we get so focused on the material world around us and really forget, or at least neglect, the soul & spirit.

– Sunlit Greens –

The same goes with the photograph above, I think, and It’s mostly to do with how dark the shadows come out; with all the tinkering that was done (tone adjustments, dynamic range adjusting through bleach bypass simulation, and vignette), I will probably tweak it a bit more to bring out the feel of the scene a bit better. Was the background a bit too dark? Taking into consideration the good dynamic range of the sensor used to take the photograph, I could’ve bracketed it to make the shadows lighter, but I think that doing this would’ve actually betrayed the feel, and look, of the scene all too easily.