249 - Ridin’ High



The windows of our office get cleaned these days, and when today I left from work, seeing these two people dangling high above me, I asked them if I could take a picture. They agreed, I took three images, this one, a second, and one that I discarded later. Afterwards, a guy who had seen me asked for the photos, one of the workers up there was his girlfriend and he had forgotten to bring along a camera.

Both images were run through Capture NX without major modifications. I have corrected exposure, adjusted contrasts, and for this one I have set three color control points, two for the reflection of the sky and one to warm up the reflected facade. Then I have cropped both, to let some lines come exactly out of the corners. Normally I try to do that in-camera (Ted calls me a control-freak for that), this time I had been inexcusably sloppy πŸ™‚

We had Ella Fitzgerald three days ago, we had Cole Porter yesterday, but - sorry, I can’t help it - the Song of the Day is Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of “Ridin’ High” from “The Cole Porter Songbook”. Let’s be honest: this is a very tame Ella, and still, Goodness, was this woman a singer! And Cole Porter? Well, he is as he ever is. You may hate Jazz, you may hate musicals, you may hate the Great American Songbooks, but all this won’t be an excuse for not loving Cole Porter at least for the most crazy lyrics ever. Not in this case, but we’ll get back to the point.


There are 6 comments

Ted Byrne   (2007-06-20)

All artists are control freaks. How could we be otherwise? What we do is suck data into facts into information and through our own voice explain meaning to the world.

And you've done it all well hear. I like the special tension that the angle brings to this ... and the use of negative space reinforces it powerfully.

Nice.

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Ted Byrne   (2007-06-20)

Ooops... I misspelled "here" as "hear" in that last post... and yet I spoke of voice. Hmmm... maybe the slip was from a deep psych place? Or perhaps I should have just inserted two different pieces of punctuation... as in...

"And you've done it all well, hear?"

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andreas   (2007-06-20)

Ladies and Gentlemen, the only Man in the World who can get philosophical over a typo πŸ™‚

Thanks, Ted, as always it means a lot.

Andreas

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pnfphotography   (2007-06-20)

Grins at the previous comments and spelling error... lol... This is very intense I can not image hanging on the outside of a building to wash a window..... strong image ....

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Anna   (2007-06-22)

This blog is stunning. I got word of it through a friend. You have such an eye! I will definitely be back! Thanks for sharing the world through your lens.

~Anna

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Thomas   (2007-06-22)

Looks a bit like cleaning heaven in the upper left of the picture... and then brings you back to earth in the lower right. The diagonals really work...

Thomas

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