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Friday Slide Show: Angels Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

1 March 2019

We're no expert on angels. We know a lot about thieves, liars and scoundrels but angels mainly elude us. Not entirely, however. Now and then our load is lightened by an angel or two that we had no idea existed.

It will surprise no one to learn that the world is not a well-run place. Angels are the grease on the axle that makes the world spin. They get things done that could not be done.

And they are shockingly generous. You only have to think of something you wish would happen and they don't argue or suggest an alternative. They don't have time. They're already on it.

We're not talking about those mythical beings with wings and impossibly white gowns, of course. We're talking about human beings who actually help out. That may seem just as mythical in a world of thieves, liars and scoundrels.

Human angels are not mythical at all.

But it turns out, human angels are not mythical at all.

We could name names but we have no awards to give out. Just heartfelt appreciation that there are people in this world who put someone else's problems before their own.

Yesterday we were sitting around Mom's kitchen table waiting for a prescription to be filled at the nearby pharmacy when it occurred to us to devote this Friday's slide show to our angels.

Mom has a group of three Lladró porcelain angels cavorting on top of the Fisher Statesman stereo console (circa 1967) that sits by her grandfather clock. We thought we'd take a few shots even though the light was fading.

There are also a couple of other angels, smaller ones with no markings, that have always amused us. So we tried to get a few images of them, too.

It was tough work. There is a lamp above the stereo but we didn't want to mix natural with incandescent light. So we didn't turn it on.

We weren't worried about noise (we did a lot of noise reduction on these ISO 1600 shots) as much as focus. Dim light makes focusing difficult for autofocus lenses using contrast detection in the scene to find a target.

We edited the Raw images in Lightroom CC Classic and, on a whim, tried a set with the Selenium black-and-white filter. Those were a bit too ethereal for our taste. So we reverted to color.

This, after all, is a tribute to real people. And you know who you are.


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