865 - Don't Forget To Dance

Let’s start off with kind of an announcement, and that is, whatever tomorrows image will be, it will have the title “‘Til A Spring Wind Blows Again” after the song from Clarence Bucaro’s new album. Tomorrow I’ll explain why 🙂

As regards today, well, this morning, while going to work, thankful for the end of the rain, quite uninspired though, I shot several bicycles, none really good, and then, just as I was crossing a street, I noticed a curve.

I did not shoot this image according to a plan, but it did not just happen either. I think this is the main advantage of shooting with primes, and even more so, of sticking to a certain prime for an extended length of time: you begin to see in that focal length.

I was already more or less satisfied with the image after I had taken it, and I mostly gave up searching for more images. But only when I began post-processing, I noticed two things: the relative murkiness of the background, lacking a clear focal point, and second, the dancer on the poster in the background.

I made the poster much lighter and more contrasty, almost glowing, lightened its surroundings a bit, added a vignette, increased saturation and did a dozen other things, and finally it was an image about the dancer and the relation between dancer and curved line in the foreground.

It’s interesting: When I saw this image uploaded on SmugMug, I asked myself if it would not look better when cropped from the top, down to the right upper corner of this window with the blue cross. This would achieve two things: the left and the right upper corner of the window would touch one edge each, and the poster with the dancer would sit exactly in the corner.

Well, I tried it, it works just as I expected, the window and the poster look better, more balanced, … but the whole image is ruined.

This image needs the arrow of the “one way” sign, and it needs it badly. The arrow is necessary to give the dancer a direction, and more so, to connect the dancer with the rest of the image. Funny, huh? Balance for balance’s sake does not cut it 🙂

The Song of the Day, “Don’t Forget To Dance”, is a somewhat atypical Kinks song. See the video and you know why. Here it is again with better sound quality.