Elevated Work

"The tears I feel today
I'll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I'll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight:
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
Not choked with grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes, I'll keep my tears til later:
But my grief will never go."

- Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsinger

500 blips today! In fact I hit 500 daily photos 62 days ago, and if I had been a bit quicker making and ordering my "Best of 500 Days" photo-book from Apple, that would have been my blip. I wasn't, so it isn't. ;-)

I've taken, in these last days working at Blacktown, to taking different routes from the train station to the hospital. Today I was struck by the sign on this real estate agent. There seems to be no graffiti elsewhere on the building; the tagger decided to elevate their "work".

I'm a bit pleased with the exposure. I decided the blinds in the window should be a mid-grey, so aimed at them (spot-metering, in aperture priority), and half-depressed the shutter release. I noted the shutter speed it recommended, went to manual mode, and set the shutter speed a bit faster (as I didn't quite believe it, based on a couple of previous shots in aperture priority), and took the shot. It turned out as I wanted it, which pleased me.

However, there was also a bit of processing here. I toyed with straightening it up a bit, but it was pretty close to level, and I think looks best as it was taken. I sharpened the whole image, then pulled down the RGB curve quite substantially to get some more colour into the sky - I painted that just onto the sky. I then added a duplicate layer, set it to multiply, with quite low opacity. I then flattened the image, pulled down the luminance a wee bit, and painted that onto the sign.

And ... <sigh> I had vaguely hoped I might hit an average of 200 views per photo by the time I hit 500 blips. Sadly I'm a couple of thousand views short ;-) Damn enticing round numbers. :-p

And yes, the quote would have been more apposite yesterday, and in fact has no relevance to today's blip. However, I'm still feeling affected by McCaffrey's death, so you can have the poem today. ;-)

Large version here.

Unprocessed version here.