[Leica] Photoshopping for Truth? (and a sneaky real estate FS Friday)

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

[Well, at least when I first tried to send this, this past Thursday
evening, it happened to be within the "FS Friday" window; but for some
reason it just disappeared into the aether and got lost without a
trace.  Trying a resend.  But it's really about the pictures, not so
much the small, wanly hopeful commercial message at the end.]

----------------------------

Kath and I have been working on shining up, and now photographing
some, the house I grew up in -- in the woods in southwest/central New
Jersey.

The real estate agency's photographers should be sweeping in sometime
to photograph the rooms -- they seem to be better at that than I have
been so far -- but when a day came along with nice even light outside,
I wanted to try to capture what I think is the house's premier
feature: the way it's really designed to be a place nestled in the
woods from which feel you're in the woods as you look out.

The thing is, it seemed necessary to employ a couple of technical
tricks to give what I feel is actually a truer visual representation
of how the human eye takes these views in.  For instance, this is the
view out the front window, from the breakfast nook:

http://photos.bazbarfoo.com/Scratch/TvHouse/12561680_4fHcC#913318647_U4jff-A-LB

I asked Kathryn to use her Photoshop mojo to combine a frame where I
had the interior properly exposed and (mostly) correctly color
balanced with a frame which had the exterior properly exposed and
color balanced.  Sure, I still have a number of technical niggles
about this (the most obvious being the odd color balance where the
exterior light falls on the window frame), but still -- I think this
composite gives a truer notion of what a person sees standing in that
room than any straight single frame did.

Then there's the view out the back.  This is just a few frames
stitched together as a pano, because I didn't have a single lens wide
enough to do the trick:

http://photos.bazbarfoo.com/Scratch/TvHouse/12561680_4fHcC#913339148_sWhNM-A-LB

...and, yes, for the topic police -- all the source frames are from an
M9 with Leica glass.

Whaddaya think?

[This house project is why there's been much less LUG blather from me
for the last few months.  Perhaps you're grateful.]

And, hey, since I think For Sale Friday is in progress by now... anybody
want a nice house in the woods?  Late '50s style, mostly-brick exterior,
enough land the neighbors aren't sitting in your lap but not that much
lawn to maintain, nice neighbors, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths...  New Jersey near
the Delaware river (but above the flood area), Washington Crossing kind
of between Lambertville and Yardley, nearish to Princeton.  A commutable
distance north of Philly (if you're commuting-tolerant), neat weekend
relaxation place for NYC folk with more disposable income than I have.

 -Jeff