The Big Picture

Kim the mouse from mouse medicine showed me how to make my photos fill more of the page, so if you look at some of my previous posts (like yesterday's) you'll see that previously small pictures are now a good deal larger. There are some other shots that I've posted as part of photo essays that I thought I'd showcase in their full glory as well. Heh, heh! Look out, I have a new toy to play with!

I'm particularly proud of this shot. This is a White-Throated Sparrow who was flitting all around me in Ballard Park. I kind of aimed the camera in the general direction and got some shots off. This one worked:

This one was part of a series of photos I took for a weekly theme "challenge" on a photography group on Gather.com. The theme was music, and this shot actually got first place. I like working in black & white. Most often I'll shoot a scene both in color and in b&w (ain't digital life grand, when you can shoot 'em like that in the same camera side by side?) and then "develop" the color shot as a b&w in Photoshop™. Nine times out of ten the "developed" shot works better than the one actually shot in b&w. And that takes us right back to the days of developing your own shots in your own darkroom, because the steps I follow to create a b&w shot in Photoshop™ are just the digital equivalents of the processes used to make b&w prints in the darkroom. As much as a lot of the old-fashioned "I only shoot on film" photographers complain about digital photography, it's really taking us back to the old days in the art, when each photographer had complete control over what got printed on that piece of paper. And here's a prime example:

And there you have it. You'll be seeing more of these full-size shots from now on; some things just need to be seen in all their glory!