360 Bar light adjustment

iPhone 7, cropped and altered

For my 365th day in a row, I went in search of a scene with “365” in it. And I ended up settling for 360.

Cropped and straightened, this wasn’t a bad shot. Except for one thing: to get the light levels adjusted properly for the shot as a whole, I had to make the interesting part (the folks behind the counter) too dark.

Enter Photoshop. I masked off the stand’s window (easy enough, as it was close to a simple rectangle). Then I could adjust the light levels separately.

For my blog, this wasn’t a problem at all. But if I took this picture for a newspaper, odds are this kind of alteration would be considered an ethics violation. Even though the result produced a photo that accurately reproduced what I saw when I took it, masking is considered a slippery slope for folks whose reputations depend on publication of unaltered images.

Here’s the photo as shot:

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Best of the 365 Blog - April 2017

April was a quiet month, mostly spent at work or at home.

A cat toy abandoned on a heating grate made an interesting study in patterns and lines.

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This is a close up of gel pens in a rack. I used an off-camera flash to get the odd side lighting.

Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/125, f/32, ISO 200

When I moved the bird seed boxes off their shelf to refill them, I found an interesting example of texture and rule of thirds.

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I got a mini fridge for my office, just big enough for six cans of DMD.

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April 15 found us back at the ballpark for another season in the sun. This is the well-worn number on the back of my seat.

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Easter eggs, naturally.

Nikon D7000, 45mm (35-80), 1/1250, f/4.2, ISO 200

Here’s something I’d never seen before: two pennies in a Ziploc bag of water, hanging above the drive-thru window at China Feast. We looked it up later and found that it was there for good luck and good fortune.

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It seemed like this might be useful photo clip art for future projects.

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