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14 November 2008
Photo Friday: Photos that you think should/could be paintings.
My daughter and I were just arguing last night about this photo. I received it in an email forward with some other great pictures. She thinks it's been photoshopped to death and/or is a painting. The subject line in the email was "National Geographic BEST Pictures For the Year". I poked around their site but couldn't find this. Whaddya think?
no, that's not photoshopped. It's merely excellent composition and fantastic lighting. I would also posit that it was potentially shot with a newer high-end digicam like the Nikon D700 or D3 which has ridiculous dynamic range and sharpness.
nelvana, I didn't find that one on their site, though I found it around the net in a few places using TinEye with the same attribution. Here's a NG feature on mangroves with a couple of similar photos in the gallery. The photo is probably a high dynamic range image^. It can be an expressive technique when appropriate but many of them look so saturated they seem unreal.
We're so used to film, but this is what digital can really do.
These are so awesome, and it's really neat to see how you think about things. I can see so many styles reflected above, and I'm having fun looking at them and envisioning which famous artist should paint each.
This photo of mine actually WAS made into a watercolor painting by an art student. His assignment was to do an image based on a fortune-cookie message, and the one he got was "Do Not Dwell On Differences With A Loved One." He found my pic looking for a diner photo to use as a reference (and he asked my permission first).
stilicho, thanks for the info ... very helpful. And the TinEye site is so cool - it was a "what will they think of next!" moment for me when I checked it out. Thanks
To me this picture of a fish at Shinagawa aquarium has the feel of a painting. The weirdly blurry background (an artifact of the curved glass plus the water, I guess) set against the stark clarity of the fish: makes me think of some kind of contemporary hyper-surrealism, or something.