Solitary Bench on a Snowy Day

Solitary Bench on a Snowy Day (shirley shelton©copyright 2011)

A bench on a cold day. A snow covered and solitary bench in a park as the whole county reels under the grip of cold weather...

The solitary bench is a subject often captured by photographers with a far keener eye than mine. But it's a subject begging to be approached again and again since it can symbolise so much or conversely mean absolutely nothing?

Real life often fails to deliver the requisite drama to a shot which is why black and white or sepia are especially good at conveying a mood of isolation. By subtracting colour we are required to engage the image in a completely different way and with a whole array of different emotions.

Photoshop again fills in where real life can't by producing the snow falling effect. Photographing falling snow (like rain) can prove very difficult and the end results hardly resemble what our infinitely more adaptive eyes can perceive with ease. In this case once I'd desaturated the image, tweaked the levels and was happy with the tonal values I pasted a photo I'd taken of shingle over the top. Applying the 'hard light' filter removed the dark background enabling the shingle to stand out as an effective substitute snow.

 You can the effect by comparing the original (bottom photo) with the digitally enhanced one (top) That's showbiz!

 The empty bench. Symbol of solitude and captured in a million black and white pictures of parks filled with leafless trees yet void of colour and people. Lonely images. Cool images? Images that sit well with our modern tendency to favour the bleak, the dark and the cynical?

Shirley

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