African Sea – Experiment in Digital Processing
African Sea – An Experiment in Digital Processing using GIMP software. Here is an original photo I took in Apam, Ghana, West Africa of the boats at anchor just off the towns of Apam and Mumford in Central Ghana. The first photo is the original unprocessed photo followed by the second photo with slight cropping and digital enhancement to bring out the green color and the clouds which otherwise tended to be muted and flat in the original (click to enlarge any photo).
Apam Sea – Original
Apam Sea – Digital Processed
For the third and fourth photos I added a lighting effect (lens flair) to add an artificial sun flair to the photo. With the third photo I added the flair to the water just in front by the rocks as if from a waning afternoon sun. However, in the second I added the flair to the sky and enhanced the coloration as well to give a strong green color which though present in the algae on the rocks is not so normally intense as this. There is a website on Facebook called Subconscious Dreams which processes most photos using such exaggeration to give a “Dream like” state. I did not want to go so far as they do in extreme processing, but the green is certainly more intense. In the fifth photo I changed the flair to come in from the left side which lightened the beach area and gave definition to the clouds and breaking wave as well.
Apam Sea- Sunlight Flair Effect
Apam Sea – Sunglight Flair/ Dream Coloration
Apam Sea – Side Flair with Coloration
Tell me your thoughts on which photo rendering you prefer and why. See if you can tell me what time of day and under what conditions I took the original photograph.
Photographs copyrighted by Jean-Bernard Cabana (c) 2012.
