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January 10, 2012 at 8:25 pm
No retouching or altering. No GIMP-ing and no enhancements. Just Mother Nature and a Canon EOS Rebel T-3.
January 11, 2012 at 9:01 am
Er, not exactly.
I tinkered with the sharpness, brightness, and contrast a bit, then resized them down in the GIMP. Any one who wants the full deal can get hold of you.
Light meters, and therefore automatic cameras, default to trying to find the average brightness–that’s why pictures of snow or beach scenes don’t come out as bright as the scene you remember (and actually saw). They need help because, left to themselves, they don’t do a very good job reproducing high-contrast scenes.
With a manual camera, the trick is to open the f-stop two clicks before taking the picture. With digital cameras, except for the very high-end ones with manual lenses, manually adjusting the settings seems to be a mass of incomprehensibly complex menus. Consequently, a little after-processing helps.
I’m planning a basic GIMP podcast for HPR about this very subject. GIMP tutorials are a dime a dozen. Good GIMP tutorials are rare, except for Meet the GIMP.
January 12, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Didn’t realize you’d retouched them. I posted the top one and bottom one on WeatherUnderground with no “tweaking.” Both of those were picked “as is” as an Approver’s Choice. An honor that isn’t too easy to come by.
January 12, 2012 at 11:18 pm
This tells me that my retouching did exactly what I wanted: bring out what was already in the photos, not change them.