christopher’s lives (v5.3)

balloon season is here and this is an old favorite of mine with some new modifications to snap it up a bit… here is the original from oct 1, 2005…

this was taken at albuquerque international balloon fiesta with my first real digital camera (lotsa stuff is broke at that link, btw)… i have no idea how it came out so good - it was totally a lucky shot, pointed, clicked, and it was just there… i have always had an affection for it and there was very little to do when i touched it up for this re-post… i enhanced the colors a little and sharpened the whole thing a bit, cropped a bit off the bottom, brightened it a hair, but, that’s it… i am considering doing a fancier edit, but, this will do for now…

anyway, tomorrow is the local, pathetic little balloon thing and we are about three weeks away, i guess from the REAL balloon fiesta in abq and, rest assured, i will be taking my dslr and my little canon p&s with plenty of cards…

i couldn’t help it - i just kept coming back and tinkering…

i once heard someone say that photoshop should only let you work on a pic for ten minutes - something like that… i definitely overworked the last two, to varying degrees…

anyway, have a look and feel free to comment…

yeah, this is just a snapshot - taken with a flash no less (eww), but i kinda’ like it…

i tried to touch it up and make it a little bit better, though… unfortunately, i made a big mistake… his arm… see, i was trying to take a flat pic and draw more attention to the pizza face, so i decided to desaturate all around, except for his face and his plate and soften the focus all around as well… well, i initially also re-uh-saturated(??) his arm and then decided it looked funny and it took emphasis away from where i wanted it… after i softened the whole pic and then sharpened his face and the plate, it occured to me that i should have went ahead and colored his arm and the softened focus on it would have been enough to de-emphasize it…
if it had been a real photo, i would have started over but i didn’t want to put that much effort into something that wouldn’t ever be better than just a snapshot that only a relative would care about :P and, if i had been doing all this stuff in gimp/photoshop, i would have been able to fix it without starting over, but, i have been exploring the picnik editor thingy integrated with flickr just to check it out, so, oh well…

anyway, there it is…
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(here is the original)

the flickr description is:

“this is one of my favorite shots i’ve ever taken…
this is a new, slightly improved version of one i posted a few months ago… (i try not to mess with old photos - let it show what i DIDN’T know at the time…)

i got about 3 or 4 snaps in when she started getting a little uncomfortable and started doing the thing with her toes you can see and i loved it so, this is the one i kept…
this one is one of the few framed in my bedroom…”

this newer version is cropped - the vertical framing is just better composition for this one, i think - and i bumped up the gamma and contrast a hair…

UPDATE

i had to try it in soft focus…

i think i like it ALOT better now…

these are OPP (other people’s pics) selected from flickr…

billy was my closest friend back home… he helped lead the addiction recovery ministry when i came to the church with only a couple weeks clean time and was a huge help to me… as time went by, we became not only close friends but partners in both that ministry as well as working with the homeless…
billy is known as a bit of a cartoon character come to life - lively and a little eccentric, definitely someone you remember after only having spent a few minutes with him… he is outgoing and talkative, making friends where ever he goes - always the one talking to new people at church or even just in line at wal-mart, he is incapable of keeping to himself…

one day, a year or so ago, he came over for coffee and we hung out on my balcony and talked and i snapped a hundred or more pics… these are my favorite three…

firstly, here is a glimpse at his more upbeat, whimsical side as we had a good time…

but, we also discussed serious issues…

and, this one is just billy to me… i don’t think i could have a better picture of him - this is the man i know and love… always a smile, but i know how much is under there and i see all of it here… this one is framed in my bedroom…

when i showed these to billy and his wife, tara, billy made the comment (on more than one of them) that he had never seen that side of himself before… that is the biggest compliment a person can give me when i shoot them… because to me it says that i did it right - that they are seeing them the way i see them… that i managed to capture what i saw… and that’s what it is all about to me - why i love photography so much… you can see something or someone so many times, but then someone with the gift can photograph it and you can see it in a way you never have, even if you had stood at that same spot or seen the same moment… or you can see, frozen in time, something you HAVE seen before, so many times, but it was always fleeting and an artist knows just when to snap that shutter to catch what can be missed in a blink…
the ART is first to see and then to be able to capture what you see…

i am still trying to learn both :P

christine and storm, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

flickr description: “i had to take a bunch of these to get this shot and it isn’t even that great…”

i am fond of it, though…

even i get tired of sifting through so many of my photos, hoping to bump into a good one, so i finally made a “best of” folder…

you can peruse it here…

it is the stuff i think is best, not just sentimental value…
i have long wanted to separate the “photography” from the “snapshots” but can never think of a way to work that out in a way i like, so, i did this instead… i also changed my flickr badge over there on the right to only show pics from this set and added a direct link to it in my “all my online stuff” section on the side bar (which also has undergone a major change itself, in case you hadn’t noticed)…

as i say in the collection, i need to seriously whittle down - it was put together kind of hurriedly… here is the description on the set “i really need to whittle these down… maybe HALF this many… anyway, these are arranged from newest to oldest - as time has gone by, i have learned a bit more about photography techniques and have gotten better cameras, so i say the newer stuff is the best of the best, but, your taste may vary…”

anyway, the changes to my various online stuff continues…

book of ruth, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

not my best pic ever, but, i actually spent some time trying to get this shot… as i sat at the men’s rally at calvary chapel abq, i was taking shots of people all around me with my recently acquired canon a720 and i just can’t bring myself to delete this one… this one is kinda’ dark, but, the detail was the best of the ones i took…

DSCN3508, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

an old one, taken on a little piece of junk camera, but, it would have been nearly impossible to screw up these shots…
this is one of many shots i took of a sunrise on a flight from albuquerque to l.a. - if you click on the pic it will take you to where you can see more of them… this shot is one of my favorites - i love the surreal feeling…

meh, i just typed a bunch of stuff, deleted and started over and then again a couple times, so, i think i’ll stop trying and just let the photo do the talking :P

though i will add that, when i first took these photos, i dunno’ maybe three years ago, this was probably the most popular of all of them and no less than five people had this one as the wallpaper on their computer…