Sometimes a Cigar is NOT just a Cigar
I’ve been playing with Toby Marshall’s new coloring "Popcorn Plus Orbit Traps", and I got in the groove. I was making texture layers like crazy…. masking this, masking that… I was on a roll. Yeah, Baby, I might have something here!
Ever get just "too close" to an image? Like not being able to see the forest for the trees?
I decided to render this puppy – and with quite a few layers and not the fastest coloring in the world, it took quite a while. I changed some things and rendered again, and again…….
Ahhh….. now that’s more like it!
It was only after all these renders, and hours of work with this image, that I, er, noticed an "unfortunate" shape at the lower left. Good Lord! Has that thing been there all along?
Yup!
I really liked the overall shape of this julia – thanks again to Toby on several levels- but now all I could focus on was THE THING.
I’ve taken Janet’s excellent courses – and in one she describes how we must make judgement calls on letting what we might like about a fractal go for the greater good.
I ended up cropping the image.
Lorena Bobbit would be proud.
posted by Panster at 1:45 PM
5 Comments:
That's funny. I often have a similar problem, according to my wife, who says most of my fractals look obscene. Of course I don't agree and usually say that fractals often resemble natural, organic forms like brocolli or the fiddleheads of ferns and other stuff, but never anything like her gynecological interpretation.
But you know, this adds something to the ancient, scholarly debate on art interpretation: an image is what the viewer sees, but most of us see the same thing. I think you did the right thing by cropping it. When spirals go bad that's the only thing you can do : )
9/21/2006 2:43 PM
Way long ago, before I was smart enough to keep track of my images, I created a black and white (not grayscale) fractal that a friend said was evil. She saw screaming faces and other such nastiness in there. Me, I saw a bunch of numbers, as any self-respecting geek would. :-)
I have heard that the mythic crystal ball served only to disrupt the medium's view of the "real" world and allow her to focus on the psychic digs. Maybe fractals allow us to do the same thing, except with the added possibility of seeing an infinity of penises in an image. :-)
9/21/2006 11:28 PM
The infinite number of members did not bother me, but that lower left thing had to go:) It's all in the placement, and in this case, size mattered:)
9/21/2006 11:44 PM
That's too funny! I don't think I would have noticed it right away, either.
On the other hand, you could have taken a page from my newly found method of using words and phrases found in spam subject lines to title some images. How about "Reptile Dysfunction"?
9/22/2006 12:06 AM
Paul said:
How about "Reptile Dysfunction"?
Paul - that may be the greatest spam title ever! I'd steal it in a minute, but I'm sure you'll have good use for it someday. It's a keeper!
9/22/2006 8:53 PM
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