"Macro" - Fun with Fire

A while ago I mentioned that I went outside recently to find my husband teaching our daughters the finer points of playing with fire.

While I was outside snapping photos, I took some some close-up shots of the flames. I went back to them today and decided to see what kinds of edits I could make.

I chose this photo to play with. I like that it has a few different areas of interest to play with, and a few different textures as well.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that while I am essentially a quiet, even-keeled person, underneath it all I love me some drama.

As long as it is not part of my own life, that is.

The first part of the photo that jumped out at me on the screen was the bottom center section.

I love how the flames are curling around the lowest stick, but I can also get a peek at the grain of the wood at the top.

Very dramatic, but then I increased the sharpness considerably, as well as the highlight and shadow to make it even more jarring.

The flames are so saturated that they look almost like cartoons, especially at the top. I like it.

For a different approach I went back to the original and made it B&W.

I also added a little graininess to it. I do think it looks pretty neat like this, but it doesn't have the same impact without the color, and it's not wild enough to make up for the lack of color.

I ran the B&W version through a filter and came up with this:

Now, that's dramatic! The flames at the top are distorted enough that they could be flames or smoke.

I like it. It's not something I'd hang in my bedroom, but I think it's really cool.

Going back to the original photo, I chose another section to work on.

This time I decided to isolate the top left corner. It's much more quiet than the first crop I did, so I chose a more traditional shape.

All I did for this one was try to focus on the texture of the log.

I increased the sharpness and made the whole photo a bit brighter. I like that the smoke and flames are an important part of the photo, but the real story is the texture, which makes this shot much quieter than the last.

I didn't want to distort the image to make it more dramatic (like I did before), so the only thing I did to play with it was to switch it to a sepia tone and add a lot of grain.

Hmmmmm. I think it looks interesting and all, but if I hadn't seen the photo before, would I know that those are flames?

I'm not sure, which takes away from the impact of the photo as a whole for me.

That's all I've done so far, but I've already chosen two other parts of the same original photo to work on.

This is the lower left corner:

I like the knot in contrast to the stick above it, and the bubbly flames are just irresistible.

And this one is along the far right side.

I just love that rounded bit of bark.

If you don't hear from me in a few days, please send help. I might need a photo editing intervention...