Thursday, November 08, 2007

Adding a Garden, Reducing a Little Noise


29of365_filtered
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic
Befuddling title, isn't it?

Yesterday I planted the garden. The entire thing. If the soil (pronounced "soul" here in the south) hadn't been so well-prepared and easy to work, it would have taken me 4 weeks instead of 4 hours. I'm not kidding. Each and every hole would have taken at least an hour to dig before. With all the red clay, fill dirt, rocks and roots, it usually takes quite a long time to gouge out a hole. And then the plants and bushes just couldn't seem to gain purchase.

But even though it was easy, I do still feel a bit like I was hit by a truck.

I shot several photos of the work yesterday, but not really any keepers...just a few. Here is one I took for my daily self-portrait. The original had a lot of digital noise, and I posted it that way. Noise, for those of you non-photogs, is what makes the photos look grainy and old-timey...like old newsprint. I've struggled with the grainy shots this camera seems to produce all the time. I haven't stressed about it too much for the newspaper shots because, after all, they are going to be printed on newsprint, but it's still worrisome and reduces my enjoyment of photography as a hobby.

A couple of online buddies have mentioned noise reduction software and so finally I took a few minutes to look into that further. On a user group for Canon PowerShot users I found reference to a free noise reduction software from a place called Imagenomic. It has done WONDERS for the photos I've tried. Here is the original photo:
29of365
Cool, huh?

And so now I go to the school to shoot an interactive play, armed with the hope that I might have enough photoshop skills and noise reduction techniques to produce useable stuff.

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