Empty Playground

As you can see, I made it out to snap a few pictures of the most recent snow fall. I had planned on heading to an old barn, but gravel roads were not in the best condition and I didn’t want to add to the Sheriff’s Department’s growing list of accident reports. Besides, my daughter has been look for such a day to try out her new sled so a trip to the park seemed like a much better idea. I took a hand full of the typical snow covered evergreen trees and a few of the quiet little creek but really had my mind set on finding something different, maybe even abstract. I trekked across the golf course to investigate possible photo opportunities away from the snowball-hurling children who found humor in trying to hit the man with the camera. I made it to the picnic/playground are and started shooting. What really captivated my interest was the merry go round. I was positive that some abstract art was just waiting to be captured. Although the picture I posted of the merry go round isn’t actually abstract, I think it projects a similar feeling as the black over white bike rack series I shot awhile back.

On kind of a technical note: I did play with the photo in PSP. I cloned out a small tree trunk and a few “impurities” in the snow. I noticed these when shooting, but couldn’t really reposition myself without cluttering the background. I also didn’t want to put tracks in the snow and opted to deal with the issues in the digital darkroom. I also adjusted contrast levels which resulted in some lost of color in the band around the edge of the merry go round. I isolated the edge and bumped up the color saturation and thought I achieved the results I was after.

On my cheap 15 inch laptop screen, the photo looks dull, but has good color.
On my 17 inch CRT, the photo isn’t dull and has noticeable color
On my 19 inch analog flat panel, the photo looks good, but the color doesn’t have ‘punch’
On my 20.1 inch digital widescreen flat panel, the photo looks great, but the blue and green is darkened to almost black.

With the exception of the dull image produced by my laptop, I actually don’t mind the differences in displays, each producing a different visual effect. I am curious as to how other people’s monitors render the image.