Tim Armes said:
Hi Mary,
I see that you're starting to see the light! As Asher pointed out, it's the light in this photo that makes it special, and the hare just adds that extra touch.
The question is this: what's special about it to you?
It is the sense of starting out on a journey, which I was experiencing when I first viewed the scene. I had come out of a part of the driveway which lay in a great tree's shadow. I was walking toward the sunrise. Although the sun had been above the horizon for almost an hour, the building across the street obscured it, due to the slightly southeast declination of the sun's path.
I had a sort of tunnel vision toward that light at the far end of my street's horizon.
Took a few steps, saw the stock-still rabbit in the lighter shade of the crabapple tree, raised the camera to my eye, and shot looking through the viewfinder at the rabbit. I had no idea that I was recording anything else.
But it was the light which was my impetus as I began my walk down the driveway, before I saw the rabbit.
After that, I moved slowly toward him, angling the camera down to frame him, and shot every few feet, 4 more times. In the last shot, he had leaped away before the G2 could finish registering him.
What would you like to do to this image? Once you know where you want to take it, we'll be able to help you get there.
I would like to keep and enhance that sense of being wrapped in an unpeopled, Edenic scene. But, as a sort of contrasting balance with reality, I still think I would like to keep the white van in the picture. A sort of universal image of "country in a city setting" being conveyed by that contrast.
As I wrote elsewhere, as soon as I saw the rabbit, the last chapter of Kenneth Grahame's *The Wind in the Willows* came into my mind. Of course, in that story, IIRC, it is the toad who is the "piper at the gates of dawn."
It's the gates of dawn--stepping out of the dimension where the white van is parked and into an alternate, fantasy-reality--that I would like to express. And the side-looking rabbit--one eye on me, one on the white dawnlight, is my piper.
It's as if the light had fallen through a prism just before it touched the rabbit and the driveway beside him. That driveway is ordinary black asphalt. It's pink in the untouched RAW file.
The sense of that hidden, golden sun, which has just risen, is enhanced if the driveway color is tuned a bit more to the red end of the spectrum. I like your take on this, Tim.
I liked what Stuart Rae did as well. The slight rosy glow he put on the misty light at the end of the street (journey's end, in my mind) emphasizes my fantasy of "the gates of dawn."
That all said, since you entered this is a challenge you'll no get gets lots of different interpretations posted back that may give you some inspiration. Here's a quick go that I did:
Lots of different interpretations are very much what I'd like to have. And thanks for having a go at it, Tim.
The following was done:
- I used Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight command to bring out the shadow detail and soften the very bright background.
- I straightened the horizon.
- I created a curves layer with a straight curve but with the fusion mode set to "Hard light". I reduced the opacity to about 50%. This increased the constrast and saturated the colours a little. I then masked out the effect of this layer from the trees because they had become too dark.
- I cropped the image because I didn't like the building and because I thought it suited a square format.
- I increased the saturation in the yellow to bring out that lovely light.
- I sharpened for web.
It's a lot to write but quick to do. Total time about 5 mins.
I like it very much. About reproducing your steps, as a learning exercise for myself--something I had in mind when I posted the Challenge--here are the comments I'd like to make:
1. I don't have or know how to use Photoshop. I'm not sure that I can do "curves" or their equivalent in LightZone.
2. The house next door was the first thing that I cropped out when I was playing with the image myself. It's good to have the building on the opposite side of the screen gone, too.
3. I liked the blue color you gave to the van.
4. I liked the saturation amount and the color enhancement--the golden glow, and the reddened driveway.
5. I liked the square dimensions.
Thank you so very much, Tim.
Mary