Touching Up and Glorifying

There are all sorts of great photo editing programs out there, some of which are free and available to schmucks like me.  I struggle sometimes with the ethics of changing a photo, altering it so that it takes on colors, vibrancy, softness, etc. that aren't original to the photo.  I guess it's not an ethical violation unless I am selling the photo with the claim that it is unedited.   Moral dilemma solved!  Let's proceed.

Here are a couple before and after photos to demonstrate what can be done with a little computer sleight of hand.

I can't help but like the second one better.  Look how the blue jumps out at you!  The contrast between the egg and the pine needles is startling and eye catching.  Yet I have to admit, the top photo more accurately reflects what I saw, even though it seems like a pale foreshadowing of what it was meant to be.

Pretty much the same thing was done with this photo (which was taken by Ruth, by the way).  I bumped up the saturation so that the color of the leaves nearly burns against the cool, dark water.  Now is this falsifying or glorifying the photograph?   The Bible says that woman is the glory of the man, meaning that she takes what he does and makes it better, fills it out or adds to it.   It doesn't seem right to take a photo of what God created and then "glorify" it, as if He didn't make the world glorious enough.  But I like to think that perhaps what we see here on earth is but a pale shadow of what He has in store for us, the unedited photo, as it were.   When we see Him face to face, we'll see the glorified Jesus, the saturated God-Man.  Maybe even the leaves will seem like they are on fire.

Mr. Shiny

Someone spotted this little fella by the back door one night.  Normally I don't get too excited about frogs; I'd rather that they stay in their world and I in mine.  However, this one was (warning: I'm about to say a very girly thing) -- as I was saying, this one was SO CUTE!   There it sat with its shiny green jacket on, clinging vertically to the wood in a way that illustrated its Creator's design.   I mean, look at those grippers!  Just by looking at the thing you can tell that it's doing just what it was made to do.  I admire that.  Would that people could say the same thing by looking at me.

Warning Part 2: boring camera details ahead.  Veer left!
Back to Mr. Shiny (much preferred over the name Mr. Slimy, I think).  I spent quite a bit of time fussing over the photos and could be heard mumbling things like "too dark.. "  "too bright..."  "blurry!"  "Way too blurry!"   Really, it's amazing that Mr. Shiny didn't just exit, stage left.  It's surprisingly difficult to get the camera to see just what I see.  Or maybe what I should say is that my mind makes all sorts of adjustments for the lighting so I see what I want to see; the camera tells the truth.   I wonder if that's why it's so easy to overlook sin in my life?  The heart is more deceitful than all else...  The camera of God's word is unsparing; if there's something hidden in the dark, He will illumine it.   And that, my friend, is a good thing.

In the end I dialed back the flash quite a bit and was reasonably happy with the results which you see here, although I'm not expecting calls from National Geographic any time soon.