It took me a while to remember how I’d taken this picture: outside of the fact that I used a camera…that much I knew. There’s minimal post-work done here, and the inverted orientation of this shot is the way in which it was taken. The postwork done here is limited to resizing and exceptionally minor color adjustment to compensate for resizing-pixilation effects. I’ve re-discovered all sorts of settings on my camera and so I’ve been attempting to take photographs that look as if they’ve been postworked…only they’re not. I find it amusing that in the day of digital photography, the main assumption is that any photograph out there has been run through Photoshop or some such program. The implication is that photographers have stopped taking pictures and that everyone else has a camera. The latent anthropologist in me is immensely fascinated by this: what a culture assumes is a marker of what that culture cannot conceptualize. The science fiction writer in me sees a quirky plot in which photographers: members of an evil organization called “The Organization” have done something to photo editing software that leads to…well…mayhem…as The Organization has developed Photoshop-type software with a built-in stun function that turns any computer into a neuro-muscular disruptor, once a certain type of Organization-designed digital camera is connected to it. And all of that because of the common assumption that nearly all digital photographs are extensively postworked. Someone, somewhere, is sure to take advantage of that. Assumptions are handles, after all, and all it takes is one devious person to realize how to grab that handle and twist, turn, push, or pull. As for this shot: it was taken on a nicely temperate Sunday. Corey and I had spent the weekend with Tara and Bill, and on the Sunday in question, Yvonne (LovelyPoetess) met with us as well, adding her own charm, wit, and giggles into the mix. As we took a sit-down break on Art Institute grounds, I saw a wildflower garden (filled with native plants) and I wanted a shot of the golden grass in some of the most insanely bright sunlight I’d seen in a while. Chicago’s weather cooperated for the most part: putting it’s best foot forward to Tara and Bill, and it seemed to reserve a bit of good grace for when Yvonne arrived as well. And so, in nicely intense sunlight, I’d placed myself on a ledge, and sort of drooped my head backwards in order to catch this particular angle: I suspect I might have looked a bit like a human shaped glob of not-so-slimy slime mold, making its way into an Art Institute garden. I can’t imagine forgetting that I’d done that as a slight head rush was involved when I rose back into normal bipedal human position. I guess, ultimately, it was an unexciting head-rush, as I’d forgotten it until dissecting this photograph on my screen and retracing my photographic steps. I’m rather surprised by the way this turned out, and so here it is…the intense color and darkened sky are due to the in-camera custom colors set to maximum garishness; this mimics the factory-installed “sunset” setting, often used best at non-sunset times of day. Everything reddens a tad, and if you’re using that setting (on a Cannon point and shoot) then blues and greens either darken or go strangely neon: just be careful, you’re also likely to get an odd, sometimes disconcerting haze that looks as if you’ve applied a Gaussian blur to all of your edges. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.