Fire — real and simulated

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

A few of my apps can ‘insert’ fire into a photo. I don’t use them because I don’t think the results look realistic

Here are a few photos; from a few flames to a raging inferno.

Perchance, I looked at these photos . . .

. . . and got the idea I could convert them into flames.

I mean, besides lighting them on fire. I used Luminar AI, Topaz Impression 2, and Lightroom in my attempts to transform leaves into fire.

I thought those were pretty good . . . wait . . . I should step back a moment and preface what I’m about to say.

I started the process of converting those leaves into depictions of fire before I looked at the photos of actual fire at the beginning of this post. Those were the fire photos I was thinking of when trying to convert the photos of the leaves into a fiery maelstrom, but I was relying on my memory for what the fire looked like.

Imagine my surprise when I finished my conversion — and feeling very good about the results — output the files for publication, and then went and got the fire photos for publication in the post . . . my memory was way off, and, consequently, my depiction of fire is also way off.

Or is it?

I ask because the fake fire is visually more satisfying (to me) than the fire in the photos.

Perhaps it’s a matter of volume, perhaps it’s the color, but while I don’t know for sure, this next conversion is still closer to how I imagine fire than the photos of the fire at the beginning of this post.

Anyway, here’s my advice . . . stay warm, but don’t play with fire . . . unless it’s digitally.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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