I've lived on Long Island for over three decades, but I've really only been exploring it with a camera for about three years. Just when I think I've been everywhere I could possibly go, I learn of or discover something new. When one of my friends told me about Mount Misery Road and the nearby West Hills County Park, all of which connected somehow to Long Island's highest point, a site I'd visited more than once, I was intrigued. I didn't expect we'd find the ghost of a state trooper with a head injury, mostly because we were going in broad daylight, but I did expect to hike some new trails and cover new ground. Some sights stood out more than others, particularly a weird stack of tires on a blood-red tree stump. For some reason every shot I took of those had a white spot in the center, from any angle. Perhaps there was a smudge on my lens, but I never cleaned it and the spot wasn't present in any photos before or after those tire shots. My friend suggested they might be orbs, photographic evidence of spirits. I'm skeptical, despite the fact that the trails seemed to shift and bring us back to those tires, when we couldn't possibly have been heading in that direction. In any case, I did get some good shots of the area for Photo Blog Wednesday:
Click on any of this next batch for 1024 x 768 desktop joy:
Finally, my buddy tipped me off to Todd Atteberry, a digital artist who's shot many of the same locations I've visited, and taken his photos to the next level with some amazing manipulations. Inspired, I messed around with one of the above images to see if I could achieve similar results:
I'm certainly not quitting my day job any time soon, but I may play with more of my photos in the future, and perhaps revisit some old ones.Labels: PBW Photo Blog Wednesday
3 Comments:
I've always brushed off the orbs as dust reflecting sunlight or, more often, the flash at night.
Now, I've seen pictures of my sister's friend's child (that doesn't sound hokey at all) that consistently has a ghostly "spine" in any picture taken of him in his house. Different cameras have been used and it has happened for many years since he was a young boy.
Truly spooky!
The last shot that you took. At night that place would be perfect for a horror film!!
That last shot is the same as the 7th shot down, just cropped, retouched, and filtered. We actually have been considering the logistics of a dusk or night shoot....though I'm leaning toward daytime shots and heavy Photoshop, personally.
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