Landscape, Olympus OM-2, Poetry

by Patrick JenningsSep 12, 20154:18 pm

Red Velvet

Red Velvet

When I’m hungry
All I can see is food

Like today, in this dry desert heat
With only the apples from yesterday
A can of baked beans, for a campfire dinner
And tomorrow morning’s apple-cinnamon oatmeal

Now all I want
Is a red velvet cupcake
With cream cheese icing
And, perhaps, some sprinkles. Chocolate?

But the nearest one
Is a hundred miles back up the road
In a day-old bin, beside the rye bread
And a few more apples

I snap the picture
Check the time
Just after noon
Considering my options…

Petrified Forest National Park
Arizona, United States of America

Taken during travels, 1995

5Comment

1

Dancing Echoes on Sep 12, 2015 at 4:28 pm
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Great words to pic! If I could send some express, I would: http://wp.me/p5wwh8-gc

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- 2
  
  Patrick Jennings on Sep 12, 2015 at 4:30 pm
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  Heh — looks plenty good enough to eat. : )
  
  I suppose I should have tagged that post “fiction” …. though as I edited the image, I did develop a hankering for red velvet cupcakes. 😉
  
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  - 3
    
    Dancing Echoes on Sep 12, 2015 at 5:58 pm
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    It is still a great image and great art. I used have heartburn over not having “pure” photos. Then I got over it and decided the feeling or emotion of the created image is more important than how I arrived at creating the image. It’s like my geese. Those are > signs drawn in across the moon. I had a vision in my head and shopped one of my moon photos to match what was in my vision.
    
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- 4
  
  Patrick Jennings on Sep 12, 2015 at 6:20 pm
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  <grin> Thanks!
  
  I did notice your clever use of > with that image. Brilliant! And very effective. Love the fact that you have both a V and a set of geese flying in a line. Makes the ‘deception’ all the more real.
  
  What I meant by ‘fiction’ was that the poem is fictional. I wasn’t thinking of red velvet cupcakes when I took the photo. Just when I edited it. The image has only been subjected to (typically heavy-handed) photoshopping exposure/curves/vibrance tweaks, with an edit mask to darken the foreground.
  
  Not that I’m shy about taking out the clone tool to edit bits out I don’t like in an image — or add them, or completely harangue the original into something new. Let’s see… today’s work:
  
  A Trick of the Tail: Kitty was waaaay out of focus. But I love the framing and the light. No worries. Hit her hard with photoshop’s Smart Sharpen tool and create an interesting texture from the fuzz.
  
  In the late dusk: There were a couple more smaller sets of headlights in the original image. The original was indeed shot hand-held in near-darkness, so it’s drastically underexposed. But it was shot on Fujichrome, so there’s interesting detail even in the darker shadows. And when you bring up the exposure in photoshop, the dull-looking image comes alive with colour. Midway Blues is pretty much the same.
  
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  - 5
    
    Dancing Echoes on Sep 12, 2015 at 7:26 pm
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    Very cool!
    
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