Day 5/365 Hollyhocks, Coke and Jimi

Spent today rearranging my book inventory room out in the garage and working with a new numbering system (that someone on the Dock mentioned once and I made a note to use) that will save me loads of shelf space, and still let me find books quickly - much better than the alphabetical system. As a result, I spent a lot of time thinking about photography while I shifted and lifted book boxes, and decided to put up a pic with different effects. I'm still don't think of digital photography as "real" photography, having come out of the SLR, darkroom, exposure meter, chemical and paper generation. But it sure is easier.


This photo is of my Monarch Red hollyhocks -right now they are approximately 6' tall and should reach up to 14'. We planted them for their height, to block our view of our icky neighbors during the summer, as well as to irritate them, since the wife constantly harped on how everything in her yard had to be blue or yellow, and our flowers were throwing her yard color scheme off. Of course, that was just encouraged me, so the only things I've planted are anything BUT blue and yellow.



At any rate, these blooms start out a light red, then darken, eventually turning a dark maroon red. The little green onion-like things are seed pods, and guarantee there'll be even more next year. The bumblebees love the flowers and cross-pollinate all summer, so next year the colors will mutate even more (although probably not ever, ever turning out blue or yellow).



The photo below is the same one, done in black and white, and flipped, and cropped.






And here, it's "negativized" which I think is the digital way of doing infrared effects - it use to be actual film you bought, had to be refrigerated until you used it, and was used to make creepy effects.
Forests and trees looked great in it. Think "Blair Witch".


In this case it brings out the differences in color from the center to the edges of the petals.






And this one is "colorized", this time to green, because it's my favorite color. We use to do this with filters that screwed on the end of whatever lens being used at that time. There were filters that would add sparkles, stars, multi-facets, and they could be stacked so multiple filters could be used at the same time. Now, you can just click the "effects" folder, and then "colorize".

It's easier, probably more accurate, definitely safer than using chemicals,and infinitely more cost efficient. But it isn't nearly as much fun or as satisfying as working in a darkroom, particularily with just the red-lights on, wet prints strung up everywhere, a ice-cold bottle of Coke, and Jimi Hendrix on the turntable.