Now I must start by asking you not to laugh.
This is a picture of my Christmas tree. And, more pertinently, it's also my second submission to my Monochrome 100x challenge.
No. Seriously.
Santa had already drunk several bottles of sherry before he fell down my chimney. What was I to do?
OK. Perhaps I'm a little self-deluded. But perhaps I can mitigate your opinion of me a little with a (long {sigh}) explanation.
Firstly, the monochrome challenge. I did say at the start of the challenge that I was allowing split-toning and this is a split-toned version of a black and white image (the split toning was orange/purple but I've shifted the hue a bit so it's more orange/blue now).
Secondly, the Christmas tree. Well, it's an ICM of the LED lights. If you're curious, see my previously published image, Air Traffic Control, for a straight version in the same series.
I mangled it for Mangle It Sliders Sunday. And the symmetry is part of that, using a mirror filter.
One of the reasons I have for attempting a 100x challenge (a small step for mankind, a huge step for me) on a monochrome theme was to wean myself off the Saturation/Vibrancy sliders. Perhaps you can see why from this.
Since starting this Flickr account, three years ago [goodness me... is it really that? I must be older than I thought... though that has been a frequent feeling for a very long time] I have become really curious about human visual perception. So much so that I have been to lectures by scientists on the subject, watched some documentaries, and even read bits here and there.
It's really quite interesting... if you are an odd sort of person.
Take symmetry. This sort of image is instantly appealing to our brains.
For the wrong reasons.
Once our minds have decided that this is six-fold symmetry it just analyses one spoke of the pattern, assumes the other five are the same... and then switches off.
It's appealing because the brain doesn't have to work hard. You might think that our brains are being lazy but really they are being efficient.
Put it this way, if our brains went about analysing images the way a computer does they would overheat and melt in an instant. Efficiency is a way of keeping cool and allowing our visual processing of moving images to be much more sophisticated than any current computer's capability.
But the short story is this: this image really is boring. But you knew that intuitively, didn't you?
As usual for SS I'll include a link to the original in-camera image so you can see how far Santa fell :)
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday and may your 100x bring you joy!
[Little camera, slow shutter, dark room, just the Christmas tree lights on. Wiggled.
Processed entirely in Affinity Photo.
First developed to increase the black point (equivalent to Levels) to darken the background (see the original where you can see quite a bit of ambient light clouding things).
High Pass filter, fairly aggressively slid, but (and this is key for the result) the blend mode was set to Difference (normally Linear Blend is used for sharpening with this adjustment). That resulted in interesting coloured outlines against a grey background.
Converted to black and white using B&W adjustment and sliding the sliders for the different colour contributions to get something interesting.
Split toned with orange/purple.
Hues shifted a bit, played with contrast a little, just tweaking really...
Then expanded the canvas, to give more room to play - Affinity's mirror filter is quite sophisticated and allows you to drag the cursor around on the image to change the origin of the mirror effect, so you can find something interesting - and used a mirror filter twice, once with two mirrors and once with six.
Dark vignette and we are done :)]
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