Polishing a Turd
In this photo from my much-traveled Camp Nelson, I basically polished a turd. I shot this on a 35mm camera (Nikon F4s) and scanned it with my dedicated 35mm scanner (Plustek OpticFilm 7500i). The companion software (Silverfast) has a really nifty infrared scratch and noise filter built in. It basically looks for vertical, horizontal, and dots on the film surface using an infrared light source built in to the scanner. It saves hours of Photoshop work in most cases. But in this instance, I had just left the settings on from the last scan. It takes several minutes to pre-scan and adjust the settings, so doing this for EVERY scan eats up precious time. Well, the vertical grass and weeds were perceived as scratches by the software and subsequently blurred. I've had this happen with brickwork as well. So, following a saying in my professional field (audio production), I polished a turd by taking an otherwise crappy photo and "dumbing it down." I applied filters to emulate paint daubs and texture. And to be completely honest, I actually thought "painting" when I took the photo. I've been honored a few times by having my photos turned in to paintings (not that this was on my mind at the time). But I was on a mission to apply classic painting techniques of shapes and framing the day I took this. It doesn't quite smell as bad now, does it?
