Outside of the La Brae tar pits in Los Angeles was this wonderful cactus that seemed to shine from within. Below is the original and two B&W versions of the original. Beauty seen from multiple color and Black and white persectives!
Cropped color original
Sepia
Warm red
Above are the original and two final versions of “my Manifestations of Beauty: Succulent with Shining Halo.” Click on the “next” and “back” arrows to see the pictures in succession. Be sure to see the full sized image on any photo by simply clicking on the photo. To close the full sized image click the x at the top of the photo. I hope you enjoy these photos from Esalen Institute on the Monterey Peninsula. These photos were taken in March 2014 on my iphone camera.
[Not a valid template]
What caught my eye when I saw this were the following things: the yellow backlit halo above the very green leaf, the beautiful curved shape of that yellow Halo, the light shining subtly all the way through the green leaf, and the shadow pattern from the artistic nearby fence on the far leaf.
[Not a valid template]
To bring out what I thought was most beautiful, I cropped and removed the parts of the picture that distracted from the essence of beauty I saw. The above is the result, a moment that will never happen again with this sunlight and with these shadows.
[Not a valid template]
Although I love the color version, the black and white version emphasizes even more the curves, the shapes, the curved shape shadows. Both are beautiful in different ways.
Beauty dances in many forms, in many manifestations, for example, over time a caterpillar becomes a larvae becomes a butterfly. This is beauty observed through time.
Yet Beauty can also be a single moment, a single photograph. Single moment beauty can viewed through many different filters. The same beauty, the same moment, seen differently, With each filter bringing out a different aspect of the unspeakable and multilayered beauty in each object.
I have been red green colorblind all my life, I see the world differently than those who are not colorblind. I often wonder how they see. Perhaps because of this, I love taking the same photograph and looking at it through different filters using programs like aperture, Lightroom, and Photoshop.
