The Mind’s Eye

Over the last few weeks I’ve been preparing for my upcoming photo shoot in Hawaii in June. I’m anticipating challenging conditions both physically (heat and cold) and photographically (lighting extremes). I am less concerned about the former and more concerned about the latter. Consequently, I acquired graduated ND filters as well as standard ND filters of varying densities to deal with Hawaiian light.

Also, I discovered a wonderful product for my screw-in filters, namely Xume magnetic adaptors, which allow me to by-pass the screw-ins and simply stick the filters on magnetically. They were a little costly but, when in the field shooting, time is of the essence.

I’ve included the current blog post photo to summarize the current state of my thinking, photographically. That is, when I see a scene, I not only am seeing the scene but also I am projecting onto this scene various personal attributes (how I value certain things as colors, light, object as well emotive elements as warmth, aversion, mystery, joy, etc.).  The current blog photo was taken with a Canon Powershot G2 camera many years ago. It was highly contrasted and blown out with mid-day light. Only by using some post-processing techniques was I able to salvage what my mind’s eye saw at that moment. The mind’s eye image stayed within me for years and only recently due to learning and using techniques to shape the image to conform to my mind’s eye was I able to get the image before you.

The current image was shot high above Positano, Italy, in May 2011. Post processing used Lumenzia PS Extension, a gradient map, as well as Color Efex Pro.