market lamp

Market Lamp

April 2008

My iTunes: Monica's Waltz from Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium

Really, I was going to go to bed early tonight. But then I opened my "Pictures" folder and, well, I got sucked in to the world of photo editing once again. I think it was a successful detour, though, don't you?

I am a traveller at heart. I love to travel. Especially in Europe. One of my favorite photo blogs to visit is a daily photo blog for Zurich. Richard's images are always stellar, and almost always black and white. It's been a while since I posted a black and white image, so today I set out to do so, inspired by some of his latest.

This was a shot I had taken when I went to Bath, England. I was on the second floor of a little coffee shop across the street from the market. I thought this lamp had some potential, so I snapped a few frames before finishing my coffee. When I first came back to edit the image, I was disappointed with what I had taken. Somehow it just didn't fit what I had imagined when I framed the shot. So I put it away. I stumbled across it again, but this time I have Photoshop on my side. So, with a little help from CS3, a bit of midnight oil, and some inspiration from Anna's use of diffuse glow, I played with it a bit and all of the sudden -- it was exactly what I had pictured!

I wish all my photographic endeavours were this successful...

...and if you're wondering about this piece, yes, it is another operatic aria that I'm working on. Quite difficult, but very beautiful. And I get to hit a high Bb!