Weekly Photo Challenge: The Road Taken

I love exploring new places. Regular readers of this blog will know that the natural world holds a special place in my heart. Sometimes though the road I take leads me to photos like this one:

ISO 800 50mm f/10 1/250

I spotted this window last week as I was walking down the street in a new town.  It’s not the kind of photo I usually take, but it made laugh out loud, so I took that to mean I should take the photo.  Here is the original:

ISO 800 50mm f/10 1/250

I really felt that this photo needed a bit of editing, but that it would be important not to go overboard.  I stuck with Lightroom to do the edits.  I have cropped it because I thought the brick was a distraction.  I increased the clarity and saturation.  I then added a vignette to the edges.  All of my edits were done with the thought of making the photo pop a little more, but not scream “I’ve been edited!”

Do you think the edits are successful? Would you have edited it differently? and here’s a question, would you have taken the photo in the first place?  Your thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

Imposter Art Lover

Sure, I like art, I’ve even taken a few classes and been to a few museums.  But perhaps that is not enough.  It was suggested to me the other day when I couldn’t name a certain photographer by looking at just one photo, that I maybe wasn’t really cultured enough.  It was a comment made to make me feel smaller than the person who was leading the discussion, and it did work, temporarily.

Here’s the thing, art is pretty hard to define, so deciding who is cultured enough to understand it is hard as well.  After thinking about this exchange I decided that while maybe I do not have a broad or deep enough understanding of art, I will continue to enjoy it in my own way, because I feel it adds a lot to my life.

The International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum recently relocated to St. Louis, so I went to check it out.  Their feature exhibit right now is called: Decisive Moments: 20th Century Street Photography. Street photography is not something I do all that much myself, but I do enjoy looking at photographers who do it well.

They also have many types of cameras on display.  Here is one that caught my eye:

ISO 800 9mm 0ev f/4.5 1/6

ISO 400 9mm 0ev f/4.5 1/20

This museum is modest in size but impressive in what it has to offer on display, so worth a visit for the art lover or imposter.

Cheers!