The Gas Bubble update

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art - autumn leaves of dogwood tree detached retina

After retina surgery, the doctors put a nitrous oxide gas bubble into my eye.  This is just enough pressure to hold the retina in place while it heals.  The bubble is the reason my eyesight is so blurry in the left eye.

Depending on how I hold my head, the gas bubble moves around; and when I look straight down at something very close to my eye I am best able to combine the vision of two eyes into one image.  I don’t know the actual explanation.  But for one thing, I can see next to nothing unless I practically put my face into it.  If I look down, the gas bubble becomes almost a perfectly symmetrical drop of water.  In fact, everything looks watery as the bubble bobs with the slightest movement of the head.

Combine the one eye with a watery bubble that can only make out faint shapes at close range, with a good eye wearing bi-focals and you get some new perspective on seeing.

So now I am off into my garden to see what I can see, thinking I need to juxtapose various layers of subject matter into one frame.  I put my head right in among the beautiful dogwood leaves with their fall color and looked to the ground.  As I contemplate what I am seeing, with my left eye getting real friendly with leaves, and right eye focusing on the ground, I begin to realize the fluid nature of the bubble is making the leaves on the ground look watery.

The potentially for wonderful photograph was made possible by my Canon G11 camera.  In normal times I use a tripod for all pictures.  For thoughtful consideration of a composition and ultimate sharpness, a tripod is essential; but there would be no way for me to use a tripod looking straight down while in the middle of tree branches.  The G11 has a swivel back which allows me to see the viewfinder no matter what direction the camera is pointed.

So I held the camera out from my body where my head had been, positioned right next to the leaves and pointed down.  I could see the image in the swiveled up viewfinder and began to gently probe for a composition.  The camera would autofocus on the ground and I could later use Photoshop to make those sharp leaves look watery.

fall leaves2 of dogwood tree seen with detached retina

Each composition has its merits.  Different amounts of negative space.  Different amounts of the soft blurry orange.

If I put my eyes completely onto  the leaves to get a complete mass of orange my right eye can still see a wee bit of focus, a slot between two leaves.  Now there is so much blur I can not see the watery affect, but still quite interesting:

slotted fall leaves of dogwood tree

More cool photos to come…

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