Encumbered by a nasty cold the last few days. Most of this time I've spent sleeping, watching NBA playoffs, and wading my way through Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure, by Mikkel Aaland (O'Reilly, 2009). The theory has been to shorten the learning curve (and lessen frustration) by arming myself with as much education as possible, followed with applying what I've learned by actually using the software. The reality has been different: the reading - slow going, with both retention and patience gradually diminishing as the chapters were studied - and so about an hour ago I'd reach the tipping point where I felt I'd learn more by sitting down with an image on screen, book in front of me, and trying out some of what I've struggled to retain in my brain.
Below is the 2nd Lightroom (hereafter, "Lr") offering.
The scene was in St. Patrick's cathedral in New York City, last winter. My wife, stepdaughter and I were visiting Manhattan; we took in this beautiful edifice as a part of our extensive walking tour and arrived at the tail end of a wedding in progress. The lighting was quite dim, and I had no good views of the bride & groom even as they passed near us on their way to exiting the church and eternal marital bliss . . . However, I was inspired by the exquisite beauty of the interior of the doors, accentuated by the cold wintry exterior beyond.
(Update: I wrote the text above [and the summary below] last night, and deferred posting this at that time because there remained some adjustments I wanted to try: I wanted to make warmer the lighting of the lower outside window. Unfortunately, due to the complex tangle of branches I could find no non-trivial method. I attempted some painstaking work with the CS3 selection/deselection wands, and excessive effort arrived at with only a barely acceptable mask . . . then after jiggering with the Curves tool - not a skill of mine, yet - I got a result half-way there . . . so long as one didn't look too very closely at the unmasked inconsistencies. Thus, in the end, I've decided to leave it as it was at the end of my Lr processing last night, which involved only some rather minor tweaking. A lesson in the angst of being a perfectionist was learned yet again.)
There is more than meets the eye to this offering. The scene at hand presents several levels of both conformity and contrast: a high degree of symmetry and repetitious geometry, juxtaposed with a mosaic of humanity; symbols of eternal stability inhabited by a myriad of visitors; a suggested promise of warmth and protection against the inhospitable world beyond.
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