My girls and I took a drive through this cemetery and we saw this crow and started following him along in the truck. He was kind enough to hold this pose in the middle of this row of gravestones. I never even got out of the truck for this - how lazy am I?
I'm hoping it gives the viewer a little bit of an eerie or haunting feel. I'm looking forward to any and all comments on this one.
All auto settings on camera.
Editing in ACDSee: Rotate, crop, switch to B&W and fiddled with hue/saturation for slight blue tone look, auto levels, slight contrast, despeckle.
Editing in PSP7: re-size, sharpen, salt and pepper, edge preserver, removed a leaf in the foreground out, and border.
Post Challenge:
Thanks soo much for all the votes, the great comments and especially the favorites - I really appreciate it!!!
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Place: 62 out of 622 Avg (all users): 6.4300 Avg (commenters): 7.9524 Avg (participants): 6.3467 Avg (non-participants): 6.6800 Views since voting: 5136 Views during voting: 267 Votes: 200 Comments: 29 Favorites: 12 (view)
you sure know how to pick them. Ive been itching to go to a graveyard on the next foggy evening. But this is really great..very spooky. what a great placing !
Superb atmosphere in this shot! I love the contrast and that special post processing. Almost like an illustration...for maybe a book. (;
Thanks for checking out my portfolio! Cheers....Martin
I can't believe I didn't comment on this during the challenge. It is composed so well. It reminds me of the not so famous painting by Claude Monet "The Magpie" with a single black bird in the snow. The rows of tombstones create a linear quality and the filter just adds to the sad lonesome mood. Not a bad placement, considering the number of entries.
I love crows :)
I recently read a book and some experiments on their intelligence... its amazing how smart they are and hardly anyone gives them credit for it.
One crow for sorrow
Two crows for mirth
three crows a wedding
four crows a birth
five crows for silver and
six crows for gold
seven crows a secret, not to be told
eight crows for heaven
nine crows for hell
ten crows are the devil himself
What a nice, evocative image. Good choice of the blue. It creates a feeling of desolate solitude that one would expect to find in a cemetery. I'm seeing some artifacts, but that's the only thing I can find wrong with this shot. Great job.
Lots of lovely allegorical possibilities here. I do like the processing with the blue/black tone. Great composition/opportunism, but even better you knew what you were seeing and exactly how to capture and present it. 8
Excellent scene and good usage of duotone. However, I'd have cropped a bit off the top (and maybe the bottom too), and held back on whatever postprocessing caused the overall mottled look.
the snow here really adds to the blanched, high contrast feel here - the foggy distance makes it just amazing ... I like the way the contrast makes me want no more contrast. yeah that's right!
"Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore'." Edgar Allen Poe This is cold, chilling, ominous, a reminder of our mortality, cause to pause and reflect. On top of all that, it is well composed and beautifully processed. The converging headstones could go on for... eternity. 10
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