Ray's crappy picture of the day!

[ray]

Compared to Zippyjuan, I totally suck as a photographer, hence my thread title.

I had a chance to visit Arlington Cemetery yesterday and took a bunch of photos. Today while I waited for my car to be serviced, I walked over to Barnes & Noble and started reading about "easy" photoshop tricks. Everybody's done it and everybody's seen it, but I've never actually had a photo worthy of applying this photoshop technique...until now.

http://www.raymondkwan.com/uploader2/files/1124/DSC_0944_CBW.jpg

[oblongmelon]

Sad, yet beautiful.
I'm heading down to Annadale for an Auction on December 1st..I'll have to take a ride through the cemetery and say a prayer for our fallen guys..

[Napoleon54]

Nice job!

Afterthought: I bet the pic would carry an entirely different meaning if you did it the other way around, desaturated the flowers but left everything else in color. Not typically what's done with pics like this (usually you want to emphasize pretty flower colors), but desaturating them might make them look dead. I wonder what that would mean, how it would be interpreted... what kind of statement would that be with regard to fallen soldiers? Is making that switch difficult/ timeconsuming? I'm just rambling out loud, feel free to ignore. :P

[Napoleon54]

What I mean is, like, if the grass and other gravestones were all normal, but the flowers (and maybe even the gravestone too) were desaturated, it'd be like the sense of emptiness that a loved one might feel from being there. The flowers are in reality vivid and pretty, but desaturating them could be a statement about how nothing can really compensate for the loss of a loved one. I dunno, still rambling and I don't know why. :rolleyes: :shrug: :heh:

[ray]

What I mean is, like, if the grass and other gravestones were all normal, but the flowers (and maybe even the gravestone too) were desaturated, it'd be like the sense of emptiness that a loved one might feel from being there. The flowers are in reality vivid and pretty, but desaturating them could be a statement about how nothing can really compensate for the loss of a loved one. I dunno, still rambling and I don't know why. :rolleyes: :shrug: :heh:

have you been drinking?

[eSDee]

Beautiful.

[PoorAvatar]

I don't know anything about photography.... but your picture touches my heart... it's beautiful

R.I.P. Robert E. Hoy and all of our fallen heroes:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rehoy.htm

[cheapie]

oh man. he was only "in country" for 24 days before getting killed. =(

[uncledaddy]

Nice picture ray. Really nice.

[zippyjuan]

I would not say that you suck- not based on this. Nice job on the selective color too.