Pointless photos

Well, I just finished entering a photo contest that my father had pointed out to me. I won't say which one, but I'll let you know if (HA!) I win something.

I only entered because they had an online entry form and it took a whole minute of my time, to be honest. If I'd had to put any more effort into things it wouldn't have happened. I'm not normally a photo-contest-entering type, because a) my photos are weird, and b) I consider most of them disposable.

I mean, let's face it. I'm not taking irreplaceable photos of precious family moments. I'm stalking around the yard trying to fool an autofocus camera into taking macros of creepy crawlies, for the most part. I'm looking for blog fodder, and after things get posted I usually delete them from my nerdstick.

Usually. I do keep a file of decent shots as well as one for possible use at work, but I'd say that easily 90% of the photos I take exist only on the blog's photo album now.

As you might be able to tell from my tone, this doesn't bother me.

So why spend so much time taking pictures? Well, it's partly for the hunt for neat things to take photos of. Things that you might not notice otherwise, and things that I think have beauty even if they aren't considered traditionally beautiful. Take the spider obsession, for example. Spiders are functionally beautiful. They're built exactly as they need to be for the lives they lead, and you can tell a lot about a spider's life by looking at its general shape.

I'm serious here. Comparative anatomy was one of my favourite subjects when I was taking my degree, and it still fascinates me to see how the differences and similarities in various animals' anatomical adaptations reflect the animals' lifestyles.

Um, sorry. I'll put the nerd zoologist voice away for a bit.

Another thing I look for when I'm taking pointless photos is pattern. I like pattern. A lot. I like texture and symmetry too, which explains the strange shots you occasionally see here of bark close-ups, odd diagonals, and let's say the middle of a daisy that I admit I've tweaked a bit to punch up the radial symmetry. It's cool though, isn't it? Like endless spirals of florets heading towards a common centre...

Ok, yeah, I'll put the OLF voice away too now. You have to admit, however, that a love of pattern shouldn't be too surprising coming from someone who admits to being ever so slightly OCD. Pattern is good. Predictable. And surprisingly exciting when it suddenly turns out to not be predictable.

Really.

And shut up, world.

All of this, by the way, should explain the sometimes very weird cropping you'll see in some of the photos. I'll take a photo for one reason, but then when I sit down at the computer to edit it (which, incidentally, doesn't usually include major edits. For the most part it's cropping and maybe a bit of colour balancing. I'm surprisingly close to wysiwyg in my shots, considering what a person can do with digital photography) decide I like something else over to the side and cut everything but that out.

Yes, it's weird. But so am I, so we fit together pretty well.

Anyway. The prizes in the aforementioned contest are cameras, so maybe if I do (HA!) win something I'll be able to take my own personal, pointless weirdness to a whole new level.

And then watch out...





By the way, none of this explains how I got so many mystery followers, none of whom I know, on the web albums. Maybe there's a lot more weirdness out there than I imagined? Scary thought, that.