Gloves on Bed (click to enlarge)
While in Montana we toured Daly Mansion in Hamilton. The grounds include an arboretum and botanical garden. Photographer or not, Daly Mansion is worth the stop. The tour is very informative and the mansion is full of little details for photographing.
One of the bedrooms has a pair of ladies gloves set on a bedspread. Given that these were cream colored gloves on a cream covered bedspread, I figured it would make a good black and white image. Once I converted the image to black and white, I realized that the creme color actually added to the image. Instead of black and white, the natural color gives the image a sepia type finish. As you see above, in the end I left the original coloring.
Daly Mansion: N46 16 03.72 W114 08 34.54
Desert Queen Mine Pump Wheels (Click to enlarge)
Desert Queen Mine Pump Wheels (modified) (Click to enlarge)
The top image is of some wheels connected to a pump at the Desert Queen Mine in Joshua National Park. The bottom image is almost the same, with some obvious differences.
In the original image (top) note the dead space in the upper left corner. I was not happy about the overall composition when I noticed the emptiness through the viewfinder. I took a few images anyway, why not? As I was pondering how to fix the composition, I noticed some extra pieces laying off to the side. I picked up a folding piece of metal and added it to the upper left corner (bottom image). This extra piece added some additional circles which appear elsewhere, and also some strong straight lines, also appearing elsewhere in the image.
The second obvious change between the original image and the modified image is the use of a sepia tone. Since the pump wheels appear very old, it made sense to make a monotone image.
I guess the moral of the story is, don’t accept dead space in your images if you don’t have to!
Desert Queen Mine location: N34 02 13.79 W116 08 01.15
