I’m continually amazed by the ways color filters can alter an image’s look and feel.

image

This post’s featured image is actually a filtered revision of this image I captured this morning:

image

The cool blue of the cloud-strewn sky brightens to a shade of sunset-quality orange that places the three pines in the foreground in silhouette. The revision is almost enough to make me forget how cool and crisp the morning air felt, smelled, and tasted. There’s still a heavy feeling present, but its heft is thicker, possibly warmer

Then again, the original image, for the way it captures the clarity and sharpness of the morning air, suggests another sort of warmth — warmth of clarity, perhaps. Or possibility.

Add to that image this blush of first light, and the feeling become much more vivid.

image

Backlighting exposes each feathering of the maple’s budding branches. The oak, straight back, has yet to begin its spring push, and for that lingering dormancy its limbs appear crooked and tangled with the puffs of cloud catching the indirect light of the sun washing in from the right.

I had a difficult time framing my presentation of these images. In previous posts I’ve tried reaching through the images to address my state of mind, sketch questions I was mulling over, and weight the things I was grateful for. This morning there was only the cool air and the warmth promised by that washed out light.


Comments

8 responses to “Warmth”

  1. SilverFox Avatar
    SilverFox

    I like the graininess of that last picture

    1. I do too. Thanks for saying so. I applied a filter my Android app calls “Instant” which tends to draw out the lighter color tones while softening the edge lines of of objects captured in the frame. Creates an off-the-cuff feel I find I’m partial to.

  2. I actually prefer the first photo without the filter. Nice work Patrick!

    1. Thanks! That rich blue tone the clouds seem to hold within them is surprisingly moving. It feels at once cool and promising. It seems to draw out the flash of sunrise as well.

      1. Who knew photography was so fun?

      2. I always thought it was an art I had no skill for. It is fun, for what we get to capture but also for the ways it can show us how vivid are the places we see every day. And it’s fun because I’m discovering a new talent. We all might be. ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. I love using filters to help with hypothetical photos. I like to take one photo and try it with every filter and try to analyze why I have a different emotional reaction to each one. Very much the mathematical approach.

    I like both versions. I like them together better. I like being reminded that everyone is going to see it slightly differently.

    Good work.

Leave a comment