Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Shades of Gray

I want to live by the ocean again.


Fishing boat and surfer in the waters off Enoshima
Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture
October 17, 2007

Natural color; no manipulation or enhancement.

10 comments:

Lionel Dersot said...

Moi aussi.

Jan Moren said...

Natural color; no manipulation or enhancement.

..except for your choice of camera color, contrast and brightness settings, and (indirectly) the manufacturers choice of processing algorithms and parameter for the same.

I think the operative statement is, "does the picture give the same impression the scene did to you at the time". "original" or "unprocessed" are not concepts that apply to photography (digital or analog).

MTC said...

janne morén -

I do not agree. Your deconstruction of my assertion of the digital image's reflecting a natural color unmediated by technical limitations presumes that my eyes can perceive nature in an unbiased way.

I can assure you they do not.

Jan Moren said...

Didn't mean to imply your - or my - perception is unbiased in any way (it of course isn't). My point was that there is no such thing as an unmanipulated or unenhanced image (or recollection), and so that is a meaningless benchmark to aim for.

What we can aim for is for an image to fairly represent our recollection of the scene. That is after all often what we aim for in an image (and when it isn't, it's usually fairly obvious to the viewer, from the image itself or from the context in which it is presented). But saying an image is unprocessed or unmanipulated is a non-sequitur.

Just a pet peeve of mine; sorry. And the picture is beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you live in Kamakura? It's not that far from your office, is it? In Japan, an hour of train is usual. You would enjoy your week-ends there, for sure.

MTC said...

janne morén -

The question was whether or not to try to "perfect" the image through altering the contrast, the saturation or the brightness on the desktop.

In the end, I decided to upload the image just as the camera captured it.

To be certain, the camera, a Canon Sure Shot A530, has a bias toward the blues and greens, sort of like Ektachrome used to have. It also has a Canon zoom lens that forever leaves me longing for my SONY with its Leica lens.

Your comments are always welcome.

MTC said...

Cher French Reader -

Ce n'est plus possible. Pour des jeunes comme vous et Tobias Harris, une heure debout dans le train n'est rien. Pour des viellards comme moi, avec le changement à Ebisu et l'atttente quelque fois necessaire à Ofuna, c'est trop pénible. Je ne puis plus le subir, pas chaque matin et soir.

Et vouls ld, pourriez-vous le subir?

Anonymous said...

Il faut peser le pour et le contre. Le "contre", c'est ce que vous décrivez. Le "pour", c'est l'infini de l'océan par-delà la fenêtre, capturé par un simple regard jeté sur le dehors. Et Kamakura, quel bonheur. Je ne suis pas sûr que les loyers soient plus élevés qu'aux abords de la capitale. Et pensez aux week-ends: samedi et dimanche face à la mer, deux jours sur sept de la semaine. Au bout d'un an, vous deviendrez l'Hemingway japonais, le "MTC et la mer". (Vous êtes déjà un Hemingway du blog...)
Mais je ne veux pas trop vous tenter.

Anonymous said...

Cher mtc,

Ce que dit le "lecteur français" est exact.
Vous devriez peut-être penser à passer le weekend à la maison.
Vous vous obstinez à vous rendre vous même malheureux.

Anonymous said...

La branche française de Shisaku se réveille à la vue d'une photographie et d'une courte phrase, pour constituer l'un des plus longs jeux de réactions à un blog de MTC !