This image of trees wrapped in Christmas lights captures only a portion of the striking impact that these holiday lights convey. Completely encircling this downtown building they cast a glow that compels passersby to slow for an appreciative gawk.
Notice that in this unedited photograph the trees appear to slightly taper inward. This is called perspective distortion and can be caused by the lens. The usual culprit, however, is an optical illusion of convergence inherent to perpendicular lines extending/stretching upward, downward or into the distance. It is, for example, what makes the straight rails of a train track appear to converge as they lead away into the horizon. In this case, the trees were atop a hill while I was positioned lower down the hill.
Notice the electrical outlet in the center of the immediate foreground, the road blockade in the right corner and the building outlined with lights in the distant background. It can be argued that these elements aren’t so much clutter as they are a part of reality. But be they reality, clutter or both, they are edited-out in this gallery’s next photograph.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 34.9 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 2.11 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.