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Photography becomes art - The chefs at Little Washington

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The Hobbitt and I were getting a little house-happy a couple of weeks ago, so we decided to take a road trip. The destination we picked was Washington, Virginia, home of the famous "Inn at Little Washington." It was only about an hour's drive from our house, along the splendid, scenic roads of northern Virginia.

It was a really hot day and there were lots of insects. Not the kind that bite, but the kind that just annoy you and get in your lens while you're trying to take pictures. So we walked around some and took some pictures and then decided to move on to another nearby town.

Our car was parked right by the famous Inn and, just as we were about to leave, some of the chefs from the Inn came out for an alfresco gathering at a nearby picnic table. I had several cameras with me, but grabbed my trusty old Panasonic DMC-FZ5. It's my favorite in situations where you just get one chance to take the shot.

I asked the chefs if it would be okay to take their picture and they said fine. Of the few pictures I shot, only one had most of their faces visible in the camera, with smiles to boot. But the mixture of sunlight and shadow, along with the tilted horizon, made it an interesting snapshot at best.

I looked at it a number of times in the following weeks wondering what I could do with it. Finally, I dropped it into LightZone and started playing around. Here is the result.
chefs at Little Washington - Panasonic dmc-fz5 - by Tony Karp
Here's the original
An interesting snapshot at best. Poor framing, tilted horizon, and an uneven exposure with some of the chefs in sunlight and some in shade. In addition, the background is distracting.
chefs at Little Washington - Panasonic dmc-fz5 - by Tony Karp
Here's the final version.
The first thing I did was to straighten the picture, then crop it to focus attention on the subjects. The tonal range was flattened to give it the appearance of a woodblock print. The exposure was evened out as much as possible. Finally, the background was placed out of focus.

--

Question: What's the difference between "party cloudy" and "partly sunny?"

Answer: It can be partly cloudy at night.
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