The Unseen Images: Choices

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Miscellaneous Unseen Images of 2008: The beach in the rocks at the tip of Cabo San Lucas, Baja CA.

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Himself: Spent two hours on this project, and nine hours on that project then came home smiling. We like this. Herself: Had a good day, but if I could forget it, I forgot it….including lunch. At some leftover salad and immediately had…….(TMI). Balance: The comfort of the familiar like popping a baked potatoe in the oven for dinner. Putting a gift card in an envelope, hugging a stuffed animal. Who knew…….

I wrote yesterday: “The Picture: It's one of my rejected shots for several reasons. I took it from inside the ship so there are reflections from the glass on the image. It's crooked...all my shots are, but the ones I show here have been corrected. The rail offers a wall, a barrier between you and the foreverness of the ocean. No special lenses were used: I have a digital point and shoot for a camera, (a Cannon A650 with double the image stability.) There's no focus to the picture either.....it doesn't offer anything special for the eye to rest on. Those are some of the reasons it's a reject.”

Perhaps “reject” isn’t quite the right word. “Not the best of the lot, not one I would choose, and not my first choice” as other words I might use.

The photo at the top had part of the ship’s deck and part of a cowling showing. Perhaps I didn’t have the time to remove these barriers and moved on to a choice I could use and not fuss with at the time. Artistically, the photo would have worked well if I had left the people and deck in the shot, but the cowling showed as only an amorphous white blob. It was a distraction not an attraction.

I didn’t change the values or the color in these images, but I did crop them and sharpen the top one. The air was clear in Cabo, and the April sunshine perfect for the drama of the moment so there was little I needed to do to the photos.



Here is the original shot and here is a variation done by T. The second version is dramatic but not my design so I didn’t feel I could use it on my blog.

We took thousands of shots on this vacation. Normally I will not use one of G’s photographs here. He took it, that shot is his, and he will want to use it for something of his own is the way I feel.

This next photograph is one G took. The view is emphasized by the angle of the shot which was taken from one of the ships top decks. You get the feeling that you are there, you are viewing these happy people picnicking on the sand, kayaking, yet not a part of. Yet you can feel the sun, you can enjoy the intensity of the colors, and the intimacy makes you feel you can jump out there and take part at any moment if you so wish.



We both use this photograph as our desktops. Perhaps I showed this once here, but it is a shot we both like seeing again and again.

Some of the other shots I haven’t used include the kayakers…..because the image lacks focus. It’s a jumble sale out there. I didn’t have time to crop it or fuss with it, and now April is long gone. I like putting up the shots near the time I took them.





This last photograph isn’t a bad shot, but it doesn’t tell a story. There’s no punch line here where the shots of the beach offer their own drama through the composition. It’s a goodbye to Cabo image, but you wouldn’t know that if I didn’t tell you. It’s afternoon, but again, not if I don’t tell you as that shadow could be morning too.

There’s thousands of shots on my hard drive, each has it’s own story. Each story has to be a simple one….like the Texaco sign, for my kind of blog. No words were needed there. Glance, understand, and move away. I’ll probably never have time to show a fraction of the shots I take, and most aren’t worth looking at. I always travel with a camera. Some days I get one shot that’s worth saving. Other days, nothing.

Today I will have a camera with me at two estate sales, but the sky is black and thick clouds are moving through rapidly. I may get no images at all today. That’s ok too.