Dragons and Damsels..

Three more fly shots, one dragonfly and two damselfly, with some nice tones and bokeh backgrounds.

The blue background in this shot, from the sky reflecting off the river surface, was soo strong that I've toned it down to look "more natural" or maybe, more pleasing to the human mind at least.

It always intrigues me when something looks more normal if it's un-naturally altered. I think the first time I realised this was for my art GCSE exam, I wanted to do an airbrush painting of a unicorn, so I traced and upscaled a photo of a real horse in the pose I wanted, then painted it. Despite me being pleased with how it turned out, all I got for comments was that I'd sketched the pose all wrong, that the legs looked too short and out of proportion. Important lesson learned. It's more important to deliver what the viewer thinks the subject should look like, rather than blindly recreating something that is real, but just looks wrong (naturally un-natural).

How does this effect my photography? I shoot all my daytime photos in Sunlight white balance and neutral colour profile, so I at least start off from an image as close to the real scene as possible. However, if something doesn't look right, I'm not adverse to some tweaking in the name of some good image karma. On my previous Kingfisher photo I tweaked the colour balance slightly, the ambient light was very green, reflected off the river surface, reeds and trees I guess, but it just looked (quite a lot) more natural when the green tint was removed.

A slightly touchy subject these days with photoshop manipulation frowned upon by so many people, but I do believe it's all about delivering the experience of being there and seeing it to the viewer.