Post-Processing Experiments: Color and Exposure

Devil's Weed (altered photograph), Magdalena, NM, Nov. 2011

I posted the "realistic" version of this Devil's Weed pod a few weeks ago but kept thinking it needed something.... So tonight, having had a LONG day and an unexpected long drive home (but much-needed for both myself and my girl child who was really missing her mama tonight), and feeling very far from calm or sleep, I thought I'd put on some music and play with some images in Photoshop. The image above started out with an accident: while working with a "hue" slider I slipped it way too far to the right, then... hmmm. And then, to the left... whoa, that's kinda cool. Then Monkey Mind woke up in a kerfluffle and I had a moment of, Oh, no, that's TOO FAR out there -- totally not believable -- what am I thinking -- let's just go back to realistic, shall we.... Just then, this line played through my headphones and, given that I have the music cranked up to GOODGODWOMANAREYOUFREAKIN'DEAF, I did manage to really hear it:

and if I close my mind in fear
please pry it open *

And so I kept playing, letting my fingers slip and slide across the color palettes and exposure settings, recklessly prying open my safe ideas of "realistic," and soon I realized I was letting go of the day's stresses and disappointments and my expectations and rules and everything else that walls me in when I allow it to. What is "realistic," and what's so sacred about it that I give up the freedom to play and have fun and just let the process go where it will, even if it goes someplace I'm not expecting to go?

I don't care whether this image is "right" or not. I think it's pretty cool.

* lyric from "The Outlaw Torn," Metallica {why, yes, I do listen to heavy metal sometimes...}