Imagining A Different World
or
How To Turn The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary.
Abstracted from the Image Wrangler
The Image Wrangler is As I Found It’s and Ideal Totem’s news letter. This month the Image Wrangler features one of Dennis’ technical articles. The title is a hot link to the full article in PDF format. Dennis’ articles are so stuffed full of graphics that it is impossible to include the full pdf in the Image Wrangler or the blog.
The simplest way to go about addressing this topic, is to start with a visual and let the narrative develop from it. This macro image, posted above, of a spent seed pod, is just that and little else. Not a bad image, not a great one either. When I first looked at it I said nice but no contest winner and passed over it.
That said, in the back of my mind or perhaps in my sub-conches, my mind’s eye saw something the rational photographer/artist did not immediately recognize. What was seen can be summed up as possibilities. This is one of those images that seems to give license to your imagination and creativity. Here your limits are imposed by yourself and no one or nothing else.
One must always be aware of the backgrounds of the images we make. Preferably they will enhance the subject. They can be neutral and essentially unnoticed, that’s good too. If however they are distracting and diminish the subject, usually not a good thing.
In this example the background it fuzzy and in contrasting but muted colors and tones. The viewers attention is drawn to the empty cells of the spent seed pod. In this example, the seed pod could be isolated by cropping… By variations in the color and tonal range of the full image some very interesting results can be quickly and easily achieved. I made 13 different variations. That is only a small fraction of the possibilities. Here are two examples. 
… Others are possible and they too will work…The important thing is to experiment. Try and try again…Keep trying until you are satisfied with the result or that no result is satisfactory.
The essence of creativity it taking the ordinary and presenting it in a different and hopefully new way. That is to say producing or creating something that did not exist before from the ordinary and familiar. It is taking the standard and recombining it to produce that which did not exist quite like it before.
We creators to do just that and feeling highly satisfied with ourselves is our reward. Discovering later that someone else had or has done essentially the same thing, with about the same material, is even better. External validation feeds our egos. This simply illustrates that creativity and innovation are universal human characteristics.
Sometimes we are even aware of the technique or idea but choose different materials, colors, patterns or what have you reinforcing our uniqueness.
In general the techniques used were:
— color to monochrome
— color or monochrome inversion i.e. negative to positive reversal
— color substitution or replacement
— false color substitution
— chromatic and temperature reversals or rotations
— chopping
not all of the techniques are show here but are well displayed in the free downloadable pdf.
Many other techniques and display options are available. Not all options will produce optimal results. Those results are often image specific. Some techniques need hard edges other want fuzzy edges. Some require strong contrast or steep saturation gradients. Others give best results with pastels and subtle contrast changes. Do yourself a creative favor, explore the possibilities.
Now don’t be shy either you can share your experiments here. Just attach a jpg to your comment or send Dennis an email.
