The Shell

"The Original" SOOC

I know I've been ignoring this blog for a while and I apologize for that indiscretion. While I haven't stopped taking pictures, both with Android and with Pentax; and while I haven't stopped sharing them on both Google+ and Streamzoo, I just haven't been in a place to sit down and type out posts.

Today, hopefully that changes.

The image to the right is one I snapped at the dog park a few days ago. This shotgun shell was just sitting out there on the walking path in a place designated for dogs, horses, cyclists and runners.

It's not really a place for shot guns or their shells. Now, granted, this area used to be a gun-dog training area, but casual dog walkers eventually took it over from those trying to teach their hunting dogs not to fear the sound of a shotgun firing and to retrieve on command. Occasionally a shotgun shell is found in the park, some older than others.

For giggles I played with a handful of photo-editing software options and differing techniques to create the images below. Since this image was simple, had some depth of field and a foreground subject matter it was an easy image to experiment with in this manner. This first one, How the West Was Won, I edited with the online service, PicMonkey. There are strong similarities between PicMonkey and Google's Creative Kit (formerly known as Picnik) and that can be ascribed to PicMonkey being the pet project of those developers who originally created Picnik and left Google after their program being acquired by the search giant.

On to the edits!

Winning the West

 I decided to give this image an "old west" or sepia feel since the lonely shotgun shell lying on the ground just shrieked "leftover from the OK Corral" to me. It's not from anywhere close to Tombstone, AZ, but Colorado was also a part of the western expansion of the late 19th century and that was good enough for me. In order to complete the feel of the "old west" I rounded the corners and darkened the edges.

Edit on the Go

Since this was an Android original, my first edit was using Google's (Nik Software) Snapseed Android app. While far more feature filled than many image editing Android apps, Snapseed is still just a mobile app and therefore limited. The image, which I stated before, screamed old west and instead of creating a sepia image, I just boosted the contrast, made the image black and white and then added some texture --  hopefully to give the image a classic feel, perhaps a little nostalgia from the 40s or 50s, before color film became widespread and monochrome still ruled the world.

My impression of the final edit is an image found in an old newspaper or magazine, accompanying a story about murderers on the run in New Mexico, Utah, Texas or the Mojave Desert.

Like PicMonkey before, Google's social network, Google+'s, online image editing software is easy and convenient. While this image edit became the template look for the above wild west look I settled on above, I used Creative Kit because... well, I was bored. That's right, I was logged into Google+, became bored and decided to play with Creative Kit.

Aftermath of the zombie apocalypse

This edit was a little different, instead of  "old west" I saw the final image and immediately thought of the what the world would look like in the aftermath of the impending zombie invasion. Not the zombies running around trying to get at our brains, but rather what the world would look like once the last zombie has been dispatched from existence. It won't be sunshine and rainbows, I think, but a wasteland devoid of humanity with the ground littered in the shells of bullets giving proof to humanity's fight for survival. Sure there will still be people, but perhaps a tenth of the population of any given geographic location, I think.