While posting late in the month I actually snapped this image sometime last week or so.
I had quite a number of ideas flow through my grey matter as the first portion of this month passed, but none really jumped out and grabbed me by the throat saying “This is a winner of an idea old man. Now get snapping!” Then one rather overcast day while out feeding the ferals I took to walking about the field of tall grasses that border the wood on the south end. I was actually looking for the cat Prince, who had been missing for some days. I was half expecting to find his lifeless body, but instead found only browning grasses. Fortunately Prince was to turn up a few days later.
Regardless, while I was making my way round the field I came across a handful of these particularly tall blades of grass with what looked like seed pods running along near the top of the blades. I thought them pretty in a minimalist sort of way and that is when it hit me: minimalist. Sounds a lot like minimal, eh?
So the brain kicked into gear and I raced back to my car for my backup camera (the Rebel XTi/400D). Returning to a particularly tall blade I contemplated how to shoot it so that I could capture both it and the theme for this month. Mind racing….well….puttering along I realized I needed a blank background, so to speak, so that there was only the blade and therefore a minimal amount of subject.
Borrowing from the work of Mike, Darren and Tam I laid myself upon the frozen ground and started snapping pictures upwards so that the cloud-filled atmosphere filled the background. Being winter the clouds were that dull and grey sort that appear almost solid in colour.
Once home I put the image up in Lightroom and looked at it. In disappointment. While it captured the theme, or so I thought (and still do think), it lacked any punch. And I know a minimalist image can have punch; I’ve noticed it quite often in the works of one Flickr poster whom I’ve been following (and who lives nearby).
A bit dejected I put the image aside and began contemplating another shot. But just the other day I re-opened the image and began fiddling around with it a bit in Lightroom. I was doing what I normally do: tweaking, but to no avail. Then quite by accident I moved a slider quite far to the right and suddenly the image was transformed. Suddenly it was different. Suddenly there was impact. Suddenly it was more like the image I wanted as opposed to the image I had.
Inspired by this chance goof, I began moving other sliders around and witnessing their respective impact to the whole. Eventually I settled upon the outcome you have seen above. And while I have no idea what others may think of it, I’m quite excited by it. I feel it has impact, but remains simple. It now better fits what I hoped to convey as opposed to what my original image presented.
I hope you folks like it as well.









