Crested Butte, Colorado Quaint Town USA; Photo Manipulation?

Purple House

Photo Manipulation?

In addition to Crested Butte, Colorado’s well known reputation for skiing, it is also a great place to go for wild flowers viewing and hanging out in a very western town with many quaint houses.  We hung out here while the National Parks were closed due to the irrational government shut down of all our National Parks.  Who would not love coming home to this little house every day?  Do you think this photo is an example of photo manipulation?  Well, I am not sure myself….
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Post Processing of a Photo

ORIGINAL Vision of the Scene

ORIGINAL  Scene

The final version of this beach photo totally changed from my original vision.  The brilliant orange sunset lit up the beach in a way no photographer could pass by.  The sky was bright orange as was the reflection in the wet sand.  However, in working with the photograph, the contrast appeared to be tooooo great.  Also, one might wonder what was making the sand so bright and simply think it was an over-saturated photo.  The entire reason for me capturing this photo now seemed to be a problem, so the bright sand was cropped out below.
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Photo Manipulations – RAW Image Format vs. JPEG

(Third in a Series of Six Articles)

Gay-Paraita-D-20110630-YH6D0389_90_91_92_tonemappedMost commonly today when people take photos of friends or family, the photos will be stored in a format called JPEG.  This simply means that their camera has a math program in a computer chip where certain pieces of photo information are saved; color saturation may be enhanced while other data from the original photo are tossed out and forever lost.  Inherent in this process is a lower quality image that is not suitable for the highest quality photos required by professionals.  This math program will apply saturation to the colors automatically and will try to get whites to look white to the viewer along with many more adjustments, or manipulations.   The advantage is the resulting photos are fine for displaying on the internet and also small enough for convenient storage.

RAW image files have come to the rescue of the serious photographer who wants to take the highest quality images possible.  With a RAW file, the substantial amounts of data lost in the JPEG files are instead retained and remain unaltered.  The result is a dull image compared to a JPEG enhanced program.  Each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary format.  Nikon uses a different RAW format than Canon.   The primary difference with the RAW photo is data is not manipulated or altered by some predetermined math program trying to create a final image.  A RAW file is an unprocessed file and is not capable of being printed without alterations through computer software.

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Photo Manipulation

Animals Greet the Moon

Animals Greet the Moon

(First in a series of six articles on photo manipulation)

I hope that my photos spark wonder in you the way they do in me.  If so, thank you – it means a lot to me that you appreciate my work.  Some ask if my photos are manipulated.  For a meaningful response one would need to know what is meant by ‘manipulate.’   If one defines photo manipulation as an alteration to create an illusion or deception, in contrast to mere color and contrast correction, then no, I do not manipulate my photos.  However, Continue reading