An unusual side-by-side on the same tree appearance for two of my favourite citrus fruits: lemon and lime.
OK, not really. The green one is just a lemon that is not quite ripe yet, but can you tell them apart just by looking? Had I captured just the green fruit, would you have known it was not a lime?
Uploading some new photos to Flickr this morning I noticed that while the colours seemed vibrant in Photoshop and iPhoto, by the time they got to Flickr they had lost that vibrancy.
Thinking the problem was the FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto, or iPhoto itself (I resize the images for upload too, so there is a conversion in there), I tried re-uploading the image scaled in Photoshop. Same thing.
So, I think, perhaps it is the browser… Sure enough, firing up Safari showed the red rose with the vibrancy of the original Photoshop. I had an old version of Firefox though, so I upgraded to the latest, and also installed the latest stable Camino as well. Still the same thing in Firefox, and Camino was also rendering the same dull version.
The photo on the right is a mix of two screen captures of the same image (from the Flickr page). The top is Safari, the bottom is Firefox.
Next, search to see if anybody else is reporting this issue. I found a post on Antipixel’s blog from over two years ago commenting on the same effect. I checked his post in Firefox and Safari, and sure enough the photo he included is still dull in Firefox by comparison.
Went out for a short walk last night when I got home since it was a pleasantly warm evening, and while trying to get some shots of a family of older ducklings across the other side of the lagoon area, these very young ones were herded in front of me by their mother. I assume she was hoping for food, but I only had the camera. Got a few shots, though the light was fading so they’re mostly flash assisted and not great.
Another shot from the same day as the previous two. This one shows the large, water-filled art installation in Justin Herman Plaza with the Ferry Building’s clock tower protruding from it (OK, really it is just behind it).
Another shot of the bay bridge taken from the Alameda/Oakland ferry. This one shows the eastern half of the suspension section and part of Yerba Buena/Treasure island.
Taken a while back, on one of my ferry crossings between Alameda and San Francisco. The sky was what caught my attention, and it just made the Bay Bridge and the city look so small in comparison. A reminder of just how insignificant even the larger human achievements really are compared to mother nature!
What more can I say? I took this the same time as the graffiti shot, using the cell phone camera, so the quality is not great. Still, the message is clear!
Thursday evening, crossing the plaza at the Emabarcadero in San Francisco, I walked past one of the hearts I had photographed a week or so back. As I glanced over it, I noticed something different. Somebody had spray painted a graffiti tag onto the heart.
I’m sure whoever did it thinks they are very cool; I think it is just sad. There are graffiti artists out there who produce real art, and brighten up places. Then there are the fools that can only manage to tag objects, or other people’s art works. These people are the graffiti-world’s equivalent of the script-kiddies; with no real abilities of their own, they resort to causing damage instead.
I’ve been looking at Doug Lloyd’s photos on Flickr for a while now, having found his stream one day while wasting some time surfing photos. In addition to some of the most amazing shots of bald eagles I’ve ever seen, he also has some beautiful landscape photos from Alaska, and photos of other animals & plants from Alaska.
If you get a chance to visit Alaska, do so. If you cannot visit, or you don’t believe me that it is one of the places in the world that you have to see, spend some time looking at Doug’s photos, either on Flickr or on his own site: Doug Lloyd Photography.
Top deck of MV Zalinsky, the weekend ferry between Alameda & San Francisco, has a couple of these search lights, one of each side. The original shot was in colour, but it looked almost black & white. This version was desaturated and then had a sepia filter applied in Photoshop. Combined with the peeling paint on the light itself, I think this gives it a feeling of age.