A Gardening Life – February 1
Every day I see garden pictures posted on Facebook and Pinterest that are super-saturated and colorful. Many of them are beautiful or entertaining, but they lie to us…twice. First because they are often given titles, or included in albums that make you believe that this is how the landscape really looked. The second lie? More about that later.
I can’t see these photos without thinking “Image, Adjustments, Vibrance,” as these are the tools in Photoshop that create those brightly hued posts. Some of them have some “Copy, Paste” going on to enhance the look as well.
Below you’ll see a photo of my garden taken a few years ago. There are many areas where the plants are still small and need to fill in, but with the back lighting of the evening sun it is nevertheless a pleasing shot. To demonstrate that any photo can be made into one of the color-drenched, flower-enhanced pictures that are so in vogue I spent just ten minutes in Photoshop, pumping it up.
It used to be said that “the pictures don’t lie” but this is no longer true. More and more, they are completely inaccurate representations of what’s really out there. The danger in living too much online is that we may come to think that what’s on our screens reflects the real world.
The second way they spread a falsehood? Take it from me: neither of these photos can come close to the experience of sitting on my front porch in June and seeing the garden illuminated by the setting sun.
Get real. Get outside, into your landscape.
This is the photo before a ten minute session of color and flower enhancing.
This is the photo where I added flowers and other plants and pumped up the color. Think those super-saturated landscapes on Facebook are real? Another popular misconception.
