Thursday, February 17, 2011

Now Playing on Radio Paradise, My Photos

Radio Paradise, an Internet radio station, that also happens to have been my favorite radio station since a friend (thanks Brendan) introduced me to it many years ago, is now offering a high definition video feed to accompany their music. They’re accepting photos from anyone, provided that the photos meet their admittedly subjective criteria.

I’d been meaning to submit some of my own photos for a while. Unfortunately, I found it surprisingly tough to extract a satisfying 16 X 9 image from my 36 X 11 panoramas, and second-guessed myself into believing that none of the results were good enough. (Some of my favorite panoramas simply had no section to be extracted that was interesting by itself – the completeness of the full panorama turned-out to be essential, at least to my eyes, to the composition and appeal of the image.) However, a few nights back I took a fresh look at the candidate images I'd extracted, discarded more than half of them and submitted the rest just to see what would happen. Late the next day I received a flock of emails from Radio Paradise’s proprietors (one for each image), and, to my amazement, every image was accepted.

So, somewhere within the innumerable images that must compose Radio Paradise’s collection by now, are a few handfuls of mine. The odds of anyone seeing them must be exceedingly small, but tune in and enjoy the music (and everyone else’s photos), and you just might see a familiar name go by.

  

3 comments:

  1. Susan Gatlin10:27 AM CST

    Oh Chris, you know all of your friends love the Bamberger ranch photos! Beautiful Hill Country panoramic views. Congrats on world wide views.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alison in Indiana9:24 AM CST

    I add my congratulations. Of course, they are wonderful - not exactly what you are envisioning, because you do panoramas, but even a slice of those panoramas is a delight for someone who is not familiar with your initial intent. (and even for someone who is)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll tell you both a secret about the photo on the right, which is of no importance at all, except that it amuses me to think about it. The central feature of the photo is a pond (tank) into which you can see clearly because the light was right and the surface of the water was perfectly still. The nearest portions of the tank have a bright green water plant growing all across the bottom. Within that field of water plant, there are lines - gaps amongst the plants. Have you guessed what those are? I think I figured it out while I was standing there waiting for everything to be just right to start shooting the panorama. They're fish trails. The fish in the tank wander through those plants like deer walking through a meadow, and where one has been the plants are a bit parted or compacted, or perhaps even eaten, and when the next deer comes along, it looks for the easiest way through, sees the faint hint of a trail and takes that route, too. And so does the next and the next and the next, and soon they have a trail. The fish in this tank (a curious one stayed to watch me) have done just what the deer would do, and made themselves trails through that field of water plant. Fish trails in a field. I can’t help but enjoy that thought.

    ReplyDelete