civilized ku # 434 ~ a good question

Plastic storage containers • click to embiggenIn yesterday's entry, civilised ku #426a Anil Rao commented:

In Civilised ku #426a, the brightness of the power cord does strengthen the relationship with the light streak, but IMHO it looks strange. In the previous version it blends in much better with the wall and I am inclined to believe that is what it would look like if I were to see it in person. Of course, I wasn't there so I could be wrong. Since you pride yourself in presenting the truth, I would be interested in hearing your explanation of what is going on in these two pictures w.r.t. to the cord.

My response: Other than to state that civilized ku # 426a is, indeed, a more accurate representation of the scene as it appeared at the moment of its making than is civilized ku # 426, it is also well worth stating that it is a more accurate representation of the scene in as much as the characteristics and the attendant limitations of the picture making process - the apparatus and its image - allows.

In the particular case of civilized ku # 426a, the limitation of the apparatus and its image that concerned me was that of the range of light - from dark to light - that existed in the scene. Specifically, how that range of light would appear in print and, most importantly, how that appearance would compliment, or not, what I was seeing at the moment of depressing the shutter release.

In practice, what that meant was that I would initially expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may. However, doing so left the shadow under the shelf a bit too dark to reveal the "small detail" that I was most interested in revealing - as is made evident in the first picture (v1) in the civilized ku # 426 entry.

So, as is very often my wont, I made several bracketed exposures that would be useful in making a "master file" in which I could elevate the the tonal value of the shadows to not only reveal the "small detail" but to also achieve a look and feel that was more "natural", or, in other words, more "truthful" to what the scene actually looked like to the eye.

The purpose of this whole picturing making endeavor was to reveal the fact that the relationship of the power cord to the light streak did indeed, and as you so accurately stated, "look strange". The fact that the "strangeness" of the relationship is more evident in the blended-exposures picture is, IMO, the proof-is-in-the-pudding evidence of the picture's truthfulness and its intrinsic characteristic as a cohort with the real.

Comments

[Anil Rao]

Thanks for the explanation, Mark. It is much appreciated.